I am the current owner of one of these El Capitan guitars. I purchased this instrument second hand about 8 months ago from a guitar store in Tokyo, Japan for $2,500 (a bit pricey, I know!). When I first played this guitar, I instantly fell in love with the warm tone and the feel of the instrument. The guitar played like a dream, I didn't know much about Blackbird guitars or Ekoa material at the time but decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it!
About 1 month ago I noticed that the guitar had some serious warping/bending at the neck (the fret-board is approx. 2-3mm lower near the tuning pegs than the bridge end) rendering the guitar practically unplayable due to high fret-buzz. On top of this, the body had become warped (protruding) below the bridge. This warping wasn't present when I first bought the guitar and I haven't tampered with the truss rod at all. I took the guitar to a local guitar luthier and he confirmed my worst fears. He said that the high amount of warping in the body is most likely to the extremely thin material used in the body (far thinner than wooden-build counterparts). I advise you to please take the review below that states "it is going to last forever", with a pinch of salt, trust me, it wont...
I suspect that the cause of warping/deformation is due to the high-humidity of the climate I am based (Taiwan R.O.C, humidity > 90%)
I then asked the luthier whether he could help reset the neck and fix the warping in the body, he said that the risk was too high as he is not familiar with Blackbird's Ekoa material, meaning that the only option left was to return the guitar to Blackbird for a rebuild. Fortunately all Blackbird guitars have a lifetime warranty, right? I took some photos of the warped neck and body and emailed them to Blackbird's service center. I got a reply back about 3 weeks later saying that my guitar "needs a substantial rebuild" and as I purchased the guitar second-hand, it is out of warranty and will cost several hundreds of dollars to fix not including shipping fees.
So, I've spent $2,500 on a guitar that has become unplayable after 8 months and will likely cost upwards of $1,000 to fix (shipping a guitar from Asia to California isn't cheap!). What have I learnt? It's probably best to stick to wood :-)
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