Design of a composite guitar

Today’s acoustic guitars are getting increasingly expensive due to the worsening availability of the highest quality woods. Composites show great promise in replacing wood in acoustic guitars as they are lightweight, are not as sensitive to environmental effects and are much stronger. Current composite guitars however do not sound as good as their wooden counterparts. Therefore this thesis research has been set-up to create a composite material that can match wood acoustically and therefore have all the benefits in terms of environmental sensitivity and strength while not compromising the sound quality of the instrument. A new composite is developed and extensively tested. This composite consists of a carbon fibre reinforced polyurethane foam and has a comparable acoustic response to high quality spruce used for guitar soundboards. With this new composite a complete composite guitar is designed, manufactured and tested. The psychoacoustic analysis performed showed that the new composite guitar is considerably more wood like in its sound compared to current carbon fibre acoustic guitars.Aerospace EngineeringAircraft Structures and Material