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I’m a sucker for fine tonewoods like Adirondack spruce, flamed maple, and Brazilian rosewood. I love traditional steel-string guitar construction and swoon for old Martins and Gibsons and new Collings and Santa Cruz guitars in all their wooden glory. So when I received a new RainSong CH-WS for review—built entirely from carbon and glass fiber—I felt a little out my comfort zone.
But it took just a minute with the CH-WS before I set aside my preconceptions about what a guitar should be and to understand why many players swear by carbon fiber instruments. The 12-fret CH-WS has a bold and confident voice, and satisfying resonance and response. It definitely performs as well as many all-solid-wood guitars I’ve come across at the same price—if not better. And, thanks to its carbon construction, it’s obviously one of the sturdiest guitars you can buy.
Building Forward
The CH-WS is a member of RainSong’s new Concert Hybrid Series, which also includes parlor, OM, jumbo, and dreadnought models. It’s also the company’s most affordable line to date.
Our review guitar came in RainSong’s signature body shape, the WS. (RainSong also offers parlor, OM, jumbo, and dreadnought sizes for this style). The body is relatively small but deep—5” at its deepest—and is designed with projection and bass richness in mind. As with all the Concert Hybrid series, RainSong uses a less expensive carbon-and-glass-fiber mixture for the back and sides, which helps make the line more accessibly priced. The top, however, is made from super-strong carbon fiber exclusively, which accounts for the conspicuous lack of bracing. The bolt-on neck is made from carbon fiber, too. Tusq is used for the nut, saddle, and bridge pins.
Though I definitely prefer the look of a wooden guitar, there’s something appealing about the CH-WS’s minimalist, monochrome appearance. The carbon fiber itself reveals subtle attractive textures—most notably fine vertical “grain” that’s not worlds away from a spruce soundboard. The chevron pattern on the back, meanwhile, evokes the flamed maple cap of a Gibson Les Paul.
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