“Responds to the touch with incredible nuance, superb sustain and dynamics”: Lava Music’s carbon fibre smart acoustic just got a lot slimmer with the stage, studio and travel-friendly ME Air

Lava Music has unveiled the latest in its series of smart acoustic electric guitars, with the ME Air presenting players with a compact short-scale instrument with “studio quality” onboard effects and a seriously slimmed down body.

When Lava says “ultra-thin” it is not kidding around; the ME Air measures just 7.5cm (2.95”) deep, with the body trimmed down to 36.75” and it weighs under 4lbs.

Available in Space Black or Silver, the ME Air is the quintessential 21st-century acoustic guitar. There is no wood involved in the construction of this instrument. The body is carbon fibre. 

The fingerboard and bridge are comprised of high-pressure laminate, which certainly looks like wood, might feel like wood, but is instead an engineered from sheets of paper and phenolic resins and is super hardwearing.

The body is a carbon fibre composite material Lava calls Air Sonic, and you’ll find that used for the neck as well. Inside the body there is a “bionic” honeycomb structure that helps project sound through a small sound port located on the top of the instrument. 

And yet, unplugged, Lava promises that the ME Air will have a surprisingly powerful set of lungs on it, delivering “rhythmic chords, fingerpicking and lead lines with exceptional clarity and a balanced, size-defying volume”.

This in and of itself would be note-worthy. There’s no denying that, like its siblings, the ME Air is a very interesting looking six-string. But once you bring the onboard effects and the newly designed Lava Freeboost magnetic pickup and preamp into play, it presents revolutionary possibilities for acoustic sound.

Of course, with a slimmed-down body depth, there is less real estate to mount controls, and so Lava has pared these down to a trio of push-button digital rotary controls that can serve multiple functions. The main control is colour-coded to let you know which preset is active, and doubles as a volume control. The other two can adjust Depth, Repeat, Solo/ Mix and individual parameters of whichever preset you have active – increasing delay time for instance. 

You can select presets and which parameters you would prefer to adjust on the instrument via the accompanying Lava Plus Bluetooth app. You will get up to 20 hours of playing time from three hours of USB charge. 

One of the most exciting things about the Lava ME Air is the options it presents when playing live or recording. You can mix the pickup’s signal with the acoustic simulation via the soundhole mounted tone-wheel, and send a clean balanced line out from the 1/4” output.

With a 23” scale and that body depth, Lava Music could market this as a travel guitar – it does describe it as a “lightweight take-anywhere, portable electro-acoustic” – but with all those onboard effects and app-controlled tone editing, that’s not the whole story. 

It’s the ‘lightweight take-anywhere, portable smart electro-acoustic’ with the carbon-fibre build and a £499 price tag, and it ships in a Lava Airflow gig bag. Pretty cool. For more details, head over to Lava Music.