"The Handle"

NorioDS

After Alan posted a pic of one in the gallery, I started looking around to find out more...

You can reserve yours for 300 Euros, total selling price is 1900 Euros.

Here's the home page:
http://www.xoxaudiotools.com/

And here's a cover of Satriani's Midnight played on one of these

NorioDS

Another demo...

Cover of Andy Timmon's "Electric Gypsy".

The rhythm parts are done quite well but his improv/solo stuff just doesn't do the song justice. But, more importantly, this guitar has decent tone for something made from carbon fibre!

AlanRatcliffe

I have to be honest: I'll reserve judgement until I see/play one, but I'm a little sceptical. It looks nice, I love the design though. The pickup choice (two DiMarzio PAF Pros) is a little odd, but I'd still like to hear one.

The problem with composites like carbon fibre is they are too perfect. You gain a lot from using them: durability, even frequency response, lack of dead spots, manufacturing consistency, resistance to weather changes, etc. But you also tend to lose a little too much of the subtle character of a guitar - the detail, the quirky frequency response. Remember Steinberger guitars? Amazing instruments from a technological perspective, but completely soulless.

I think composites have a huge role to play in the future of guitars: Our rapidly dwindling tonewood resources are rapidly pushing up prices of tonewoods, while composite technology is getting better and cheaper all the time. At some point it's going to become cheaper to manufacture the lower end instruments with composites than with cheap tonewoods, and then we'll see a huge change. Of course, once a generation has grown up on entry-level composite instruments, they are going to be more willing to spend large amounts of money on expensive composite instruments.

Another advantage of composites: they make an ideal, stable and consistent platform for modelling technology. With the technology improving all the time, modelling is getting better - and is the ideal thing to add the character a composite instrument lacks. With prices falling as the technology becomes more widespread, we're going to see a lot of cheaper and better modelling instruments in the future.

...and of course, view this from the manufacturer's viewpoint: they will have a chance to sell you software "upgrades" every year and hardware "upgrades" every other year, software "addon packs" all year round. No more competing with their own, older product, as the moment a new version comes out, the prices of the older generation gear will plummet. We'll probably see them selling models of specific guitars - copied from famous player's personal instruments (for instance a model made from Clapton's original "Blackie", Peter Greens or Van Halen's Frankenstein).