Cardboard has become a weirdly talked-about tone-material in recent years, and now the brains behind the viral cardboard electric guitars has returned for its latest wood-less creation – the world’s first acoustic electric guitar made of cardboard.
In the past, we’ve seen Cardboard Chaos – the joint venture between Ernest Packaging and Signal – partner with the likes of Fender on Telecaster and Stratocaster-style guitars, as well as a bass, which have been played by everyone from Robby Krieger and Billy Gibbons to Keanu Reeves to Dweezil Zappa.
Now, the cardboard enthusiasts have unveiled the result of their latest collaboration with famed guitar builder Gabriel Currie – the world’s first archtop acoustic electric jazz guitar to be made almost entirely from cardboard.
The project has been a long time coming. The idea of an archtop of this ilk has been in the minds of the Cardboard Chaos team for “over a decade”.
To bring it to life, the jazz guitar began life at the Ernest Packaging innovation lab in Southern California, carving bodies, backs, sides and necks out of poly and paper. The lab’s leader, Mike Martinez, had to “push cardboard to its absolute limits” so he could pass the production baton onto Currie.
From there, Currie of Echopark Guitars – who has built instruments for Josh Homme and Steven Tyler – took it past the finishing line, but not before rethinking his approach to guitar-making: “Everything I thought I knew, I put aside,” Currie says of the build.
The guitar was inspired by a vintage Benedetto jazz box, of which the team had schematics and blueprints to study going into the process.
It’s something of an engineering marvel, built from countless resin-coated molds, a delicate archtop construction, lattice-style reinforcement and a neck made from mostly solid resin with paper as a binder. Throw in some electronics and you have a fully playable, fully functioning archtop made from cardboard.
“Chaos is an understatement when you set out to make an arch-top acoustic guitar out of cardboard,” a press release says.
“What comes out the other side is the world’s first Cardboard Acoustic Guitar that actually slays,” adds Signal, one of the driving forces behind the project.
“Not a prop. Not a joke. A real deal, jazz-style cardboard guitar that rings, sings, and proves what a small crew of friends with ridiculous ideas can pull off when they decide to bend the rules on purpose.”
Like the cardboard guitars to come before it, the Echopark Cardboard jazzbox will be put to use in an upcoming Cardboard Session.
Keep your eyes peeled on the Cardboard Sessions YouTube series for when it drops.
