Guitar tech company LAVA MUSIC turned heads late last year with the forward-looking, touchscreen-equipped LAVA ME 3 smart guitar, which Guitar World Tech Editor Paul Riario heralded for its “eye-catching finish, futuristic design and integrated touchscreen display which proved that smart devices could seamlessly coexist in a carbon fiber instrument in a beneficial way.”
Now, LAVA MUSIC is back with its newest stunner, the eco-friendly BLUE LAVA, which retains many of the technologically groundbreaking features of its predecessor but, amazingly, at a more user-friendly (just $649) price point.
Like the LAVA ME 3, the acoustic-electric BLUE LAVA features a three-and-a-half-inch touchscreen display on its upper bout, as well as the company’s proprietary HILAVA operating system (updated since the LAVA ME 3), which offers a variety of apps including a tuner, looper, audio recorder and more.
The app-based touchscreen allows you to access the system’s many built-in actuator enhanced effects, where you can play along and record with a multitude of musical grooves and measure your performance and progress with interactive practice apps.
What’s more, the instrument just plain sounds great acoustically. As Paul explains of its construction, “the BLUE LAVA eschews wood for recyclable HPL [high pressure laminate], and in its green construction it employs LAVA’s 4-MASS internal design structure to enhance vibrations throughout the body and neck for a much better bass response and robust acoustic tone.”
Furthermore, the BLUE LAVA is “a guitar that you can rock out live with. So it has a ¼-inch jack and specific line out effect algorithms for that capability.”
It is, in essence, “a game-changing, all-in-one instrument.”
With that, Paul walks us through the myriad effects offered in this all-in-one guitar, which included options with colorful names (Stutter Star, Moonwalk, Black Hole, Kung Fu) that “very much reflect their filtered voice and that sound anywhere from spatially effervescent to deep oscillations, and ones that you can group any of them as a trio in templates to access quickly and deep dive into modifying and editing their parameters.”
The results, as Paul demonstrates, are sonically wild and incredibly easy to access.
But wait – it gets better. As Paul says, “The show stopper for me is the looping function, where you can dig in on countless grooves from all genres and styles.” He then picks a groove and records on top of the original loop, creating, in effect, an instant band.
Paul’s verdict?
“The BLUE LAVA is a cutting-edge smart guitar that is affordable enough to take anywhere, with built-in intuitive guitar-centric apps where you can record and engage your creativity in a myriad of ways without having to plug into any external gear,” he says.
“Best of all, it’s an evolutionary musical instrument that will continually be updated with even more features, tools and sounds.”
To check out the BLUE LAVA for yourself, head to Lava Music.
