USED Blackbird Clara Electro Acoustic Concert Ukulele 'Ekoa' w/MiSi pickup

A great condition used Clara available at a great price. This model comes with the factory fitted MiSi pickup (with Volume and Tone) and the aluminium top dots which are a custom upgrade.

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, so 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, but probably the most revolutionary feature is the hollow neck and the soundhole at the headstock, which 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, which 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 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, and like wood there are different patterns in the top which make each instrument unique.

The Richlite fretboard (35mm nut width) 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.