Rubato Guitars’ Lassie: A new featherweight carbon fibre guitar
New carbon fibre guitar
South African guitar maker Rubato Guitars has just launched its new Lassie model, an electric guitar built from carbon fibre. After the recently announced Boaz One guitar, which is made of plastic, are we about to see more instruments made of non-organic materials? After all, Carbon fibre definitely has one or two advantages over traditional guitar woods…
Rubato Guitars’ Lassie
This new Rubato Guitars Lassie model is designed and made in South Africa. It’s predominantly made from carbon fibre, which gives it some properties that might work well. Carbon fibre, for example, lends the guitar a very rigid structure that isn’t affected by temperature changes or humidity, unlike wood.
Then of course it is also very light. A guitar like the Lassie comes in at around 2.5 kg, which is great for players that have to stand up for long sets. The And because the main body and neck is one piece of carbon fibre, not truss rod is needed, as the whole assembly is so rigid.
Rubato Guitar Carbon Fibre Lassie
Smooth Neck
The smooth satin neck is C-shaped and has a heel-less neck joint with the body. It uses a compound-radius flame maple fretboard. That’s at least one element that’s reminiscent of a regular electric guitar.
The pickups are a pair of Porter mini-humbuckers directly mounted to the carbon fibre body. Other hardware includes a set of Grover Mini Rotomatic locking tuners as well as a Hipshot hard tail bridge.
It is an interesting design and should be pretty robust, as carbon fibre has very little ‘give’. I owned a Parker Fly Deluxe for a number of years, which is also made from carbon fibre. It was a solid guitar, but exceedingly light!
The Lassie isn’t exactly cheap, but then it isn’t your average guitar and could be pretty special.
RRP – USD 3966.59
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- Rubato Guitar Carbon Fibre Lassie: Rubato Guitar
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3 responses to “Rubato Guitars’ Lassie: A new featherweight carbon fibre guitar”
Dude, not sure if you are ever doing any research before writing your articles? “are we about to see more instruments made of non-organic materials” – in actual fact, as the name already implies, carbon fibers are made 100% from organic material. Ironically, all modern carbon fibers are synthesized from … wait for it … oil!
So basically this guitar is going backwards in terms of environmental impact: from using wood that at least can be grown it’s now using oil. It’s really like swapping your 1.4 litres petrol-powered 2-seat 1.2 ton town car Fiat for an “electric” 5-seat 2.5 ton Audi Q8 SUV.
Dude. Really.
Sorry, I thought that polyacrylonitrile was a polymer created in a lab. I could well be wrong though.
You are wrong indeed. Almost all polymers are synthesized from oil, including the precursors to carbon fibers.
There has been research how to supplant oil with plants, but there hasn’t been a single result yet. Just recently LEGO announced that after spending more than 100 million Euros researching alternatives to oil for producing ABS that makes up LEGO bricks, they came up empty-handed. None of the plant-based substitutes had the same strength and immunity to UV light, and most alternatives bio-degraded quickly. In comparison, ABS made from oil hardly ages, and you could stack up 200.000 bricks into the sky until a single brick fails from the pressure.
That’s what’s itching me about the eco-movement. They make a big fuss about cars or airplanes, but the much bigger problem is that most industrial products that we need in manufacturing basically everything are dependent on synthesizing crude oil from dead dinosaurs and plants that nature created over millions of years. Once we run out of it, there’s no more LEGO bricks, no more carbon fibers, no more cars, no toothbrushes, nothing.
In that sense, creating a guitar body from carbon fibers when you actually have much better alternatives that don’t use up oil is sheer stupidity.