I sometimes get asked why the Ridgewing guitar is described as an “acoustic-electric” when it seems to require being plugged in. The answer is that the Ridgewing guitar, originally called the Chrysalis guitar, started out as a pure acoustic instrument, the original prototype shown here in the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s permanent musical instrument collection. The body consists of a Mylar balloon held against the back of the grillwork face by a fabric cover, having a shape reminiscent of an Ovation guitar. In the lower right corner of this MFA web page, you can follow a link to hear a high-quality pure-acoustic studio recording of the Chrysalis guitar made by the MFA for archival purposes. I think you will agree that it sounds pretty good.

Here is the back story, as related on the last page of my Journal of Guitar Acoustics book:

“Working as a journeyman luthier is a solitary affair. Between the occasional phone call and less frequent customer visit, there is a lot of time spent alone on one repetitive task or another, and the mind roams easily. Thoughts swirl around the instrument being worked on, instruments in general, their history, inner workings, the path that led one to this peculiar situation and possible ways to get out of it, the next shop, a better instrument. Thoughts and dreams and more thinking.

After seven years of instrument making and repair, including four years creating the Journal of Guitar Acoustics, this writer found his thoughts returning more and more to the problem of the guitar’s simple bulk and weight.  After having carried a 12-string guitar while hitchhiking thousands of miles, one begins to take the magical tonal qualities of the instrument for granted, while becoming more acutely aware of the very negative physical side of the guitar’s character. The thing is a pain to carry around and store, even though it is made mostly of air.

One obvious solution is to simply shrink the guitar – the “Backpacker Guitar” solution. Unfortunately, the resulting tonal quality is generally lacking. Somehow the full size had to be maintained. So a thought experiment began to take shape.  How could a full-sized (acoustic) guitar be minimized to its barest physical essence, without being made to sound like a tin can?

If most of a guitar were air, and if this air could somehow be removed at will, not much guitar would be left to carry around. So what kinds of things can have the air removed from then. The answer is inflatable things. God, could it be possible….

The study of psycho-acoustics reveals that the psychological bulk of what we perceive as guitar tonal quality, which is conveyed by high frequencies above 1000 Hz, is radiated off the face of a guitar like heat from a skillet. Further, blocking the sound hole has relatively little effect on the tone of a guitar, particularly for a 12-string.  So, to a first approximation, all you really need is a face, and can get by passably without a sound hole. Could a guitar soundboard be a membrane? Could a membrane as a soundboard?

Observe the face of someone surprised by a tormenter holding a balloon close to their ear from behind and suddenly “squeaking” it. Instantly, the victim’s shoulders tense, teeth are bared, the eyes closed reflexively, and the hands clench into fists as they are raised to protect he face. This is a primal reflex – formed deep in the evolution past and emanating from just above the spinal cord – a flash response to imminent physical attack.  If an inflated membrane can evoke such a strong emotional response in the human psyche, could a guitar somehow be built from a membrane, supported perhaps by a grillwork to achieve acoustical similarity with a wooden sound board? Such a thing could be made to fold, and shrink, and become very light.

Where could this lead?  How far could this thought experiment go?”

Well, pretty far as it turned out, ending up violating just about every traditional assumption about the guitar’s appearance, form and function.

Though the Chrysalis guitar worked well acoustically and mechanically as hoped and looked pretty interesting as well, most guitarists simply couldn’t get their head around it. “OK – breaks down for transport, I get that, but inflatable”?? The most common coping mechanism was to ridicule the instrument, and it became known as the “inflatable guitar”, failing as a commercial product for obvious reasons. About fifteen carbon-fiber Chrysalis guitars were sold between 2000 and 2002, and then the project went dormant. 

In January 2013, a group of MIT business school students approached me asking if they could use the Chrysalis guitar as the subject of a class assignment to do a market study and write a business plan for launching a potentially transformative “fringe” technology.  Naturally I said "Hell Yes!", and began the non-trivial process of re-imagining and re-designing the Chrysalis guitar as an electric. The first prototype of the new design was completed in December 2014, re-named and re-launched as the "Ridgewing Guitar".