It has been a long-time thought experiment that a Ridgewing guitar could be made so light that it would float in water. The technology would be the same as is used for graphite tennis racquets – wrap carbon fiber pre-preg around a silicone hose, put it in a mold, inflate the hose with high pressure, bake like a baked potato, takeout and clean up, add hardware and strings, and go swimming.

With the Ridgewing’s predecessor Chrysalis guitar with the inflatable acoustic body, this was a no-brainer. An advertising video was imagined where a big Coast Guard helicopter would come down over some distressed swimmers in an ocean storm next to a capsized boat, and a number of Chrysalis guitars were dropped to save the day. However, the cost of buying the boat, renting the copter and paying the swimmers was not in the budget. I think that ad would go viral.

The above picture shows a Rev 1 design cross-section of a hollow Ridgewing guitar body just above the waist. This design has actually gone to a carbon fiber tennis racquet manufacturer, who has countered with a number of modifications to simplify certain shapes and profiles. But it is do-able, and would be affordable, once the tooling were paid for. Dang.

A basic problem with a super-light body is that it is very difficult to figure out how to make a neck and headstock with currently-available materials and technology that are light enough for the instrument to be balanced. It is a sure bet that advances in materials science and 3D printing technology will make it easy in the next ten to twenty years for anyone to make all of the components of such a dream guitar over the weekend and be joyfully playing it Monday morning instead of going in to work. Oh my grandchildren, what wonderful things you will know!