“It’s the perfect pick for those desiring innovative features in a light, ergonomic guitar”: Enya Music’s Nova Go Sonic is a single-cut smart guitar with a carbon fibre build and 10W built-in speaker
The Nova Go Sonic is an all-in-one smart guitar with dual humbuckers, onboard effects, and outputs for recording on the go, and of course the ultimate onboard output – a speaker
Enya Music has launched the Nova Sonic Go, a single-cut smart electric guitar that has a futuristic carbon fibre build, dual humbuckers, onboard effects all controllable via an app, and last but by no means least a 10-watt onboard speaker.
The future of electric guitars? Well, we’ve heard that before but that is the tagline Enya Music is going for and for what it’s worth, the brand is presenting players with a heap of features to back up the claim. Purists, look away now. This is a dual-humbucker single-cut like no other.
You might be familiar with the Nova Go series. Enya Music makes these compact travel guitars in half and three-quarter-sized models. The Nova Sonic Go has a similar body shape and headstock, but this is a 38” instrument with a full scale, measuring a Gibson-esque 24.75”. It is also fully electric.
Like other carbon fibre builds we have seen recently, the Nova Sonic Go has a zero fret, with 22 round-end nickel-silver frets, a curved 16” radius fingerboard (also carbon fibre), an carbon fibre neck with an ergonomic asymmetric profile, with a sculpted neck heel offering plenty of access to the upper frets.
The Nova Sonic Go is offered in black or white, each arriving in a satin smooth finish because high-gloss is surely a little too ‘golden era’ for a smart guitar like this. The Enya logo at the 12th fret is the only inlay on the fingerboard.
In what feels like a momentary nod to electric guitar convention, we have a pair of Alnico II and V humbuckers, a three-way pickup selector toggle switch, and what looks like a variation on the tune-o-matic style, with six adjustable saddles feeding the strings through six ferrules in the body.
The sealed die-cast tuners are familiar enough, and there is a 1/4” output jack so you can plug into a regular guitar amp and play as usual.
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But here’s where Enya Music takes the design off-grid. There a 10-watt speaker, so you can play the Nova Sonic Go amplified, fully wireless, with no guitar cables in sight, and it is equipped with the Enya ES1 Pro Smart Audio system, offering onboard effects that can be edited via the accompanying app, plus a USB output for recording while on the go.
The guitar itself is charged via USB, and there is also a headphones output for quiet practice. And all this weighs just 6lbs, and is priced $399, and presently available at an introductory price of $349. A soft gig bag, charger and charger cable are included in the price.
For more details, head over to Enya Music.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.