Blackbird Clara Concert Ukulele Ekoa Body Sunburst Gloss Side Dots & gigbag

We cannot believe just how good this ekoa Blackbird Clara concert ukulele is. Wow. Wow again, and again and again and again.

This is a very clever instrument indeed. The body is made entirely of a material called ekoa, which is compressed natural fibres and resin. Ekoa is very hard, and very stiff, and retains the tonal properties of wood. You get a lovely warm chiming sound which is extremely loud when required! Blackbird developed Ekoa to offer all the modern benefits of carbon fibre such as reliability and resistance to moisture and temperature, whilst retaining a proper authentic ukulele sound. Boy, what a job they did.

It is not just the materials used that are clever: the design of this little pocket rocket is ground breaking too. The soundhole is offset to the top, which allows a greater proportion of the soundboard to reverberate for longer. The most revolutionary feature is probably the hollow neck and the soundhole at the headstock. This allows the neck to be a resonating chamber, adding more volume and tone shaping.

The back is arched, which along with the pineapple style body shape fills the bass out even more. It works wonderfully well with the low G string which is fitted. And in the hand, it feels so balanced, so capable, so well made and just soooo damnably clever. I guarantee that you will not have played or heard anything like it! We have been blown away.

All of this clever technology makes this the ultimate go anywhere concert ukulele: impervious to temperature and humidity variations. One word of caution: as this is a composite material, there is some variation in the look and feel on the top. There are some rougher parts, where some fibres are prominent near the top. Like wood, there are also different patterns in the top which make each instrument unique.

The Richlite fretboard is super smooth, and very hard and resonant as well, just stacking up the excellence. It also comes with a Blackbird branded gigbag, which is about the best we have ever seen.

Specification:
Ekoa composite body, and neck
Sunburst gloss finish (cost option)
Graphtech nut and saddle
Gotoh tuning machines
Hollow neck leading to headstock soundport
35.5mm nut width
Aluminium side dot markers included (cost option)
12 frets to body, 17 frets in total
Fluorocarbon low G strings (wound low G)
Richlite fretboard
High quality gigbag included