A Bad Fit?

In 2014, I wrote about my search for a decent sounding, reliable acoustic travel guitar in “Proof in Pudding.” The guitar I settled on was the Composite Acoustics Cargo with the LR Baggs pickup. At the time, I wrote “I am more than satisfied with my Composite Acoustics Cargo electric and expect to be playing this guitar for years.” and a few years later, when I swapped my Black Sunburst Cargo for a friend’s red Cargo, I wrote the “Cargo is so much my go-to guitar” that it mostly lives at a spot in our home where I can immediately grab it on any inspiration. If I were forced to keep just one of my guitars, it would be the Cargo. I love playing it, it sounds wonderful, and it is durable in all of the best ways: it is practically weather-proof, stays in tune, and has (unfortunately) taken a bit of beating and survived unblemished. 

Peavey stills displays the CA line on its website. But if you try to look at any of the CA guitars, you’ll see that every model is tagged “item is discontinued.” A couple of years ago there were a few demonstrators and seconds still on the CA website, but they are long gone now. The consensus is that Peavey over-estimated their ability to sell a premier instrument and has abandoned the Composite Acoustics guitars. I can’t find any official notice of that, but dealers don’t have new stock and their big dealers like Sweetwater and Guitar Center no longer list CA instruments in their online catalogs. Used CA instruments sellers have been slowly raising their prices and expectations for the past 3-4 years until asking prices for those instruments are in the collectors’ territory: $3,500-8,000.

The original vision for Composite Acoustics was ahead of its time. The pre-Peavey instruments were, at their best, some of the most amazing custom instruments every built by anyone. The technology invested in that manufacturing process and the training and skills demonstrated by CA employees is just incredible. There might not ever be another instrument maker as advanced and quality oriented as was that original California company. It’s worth your time, if you are interested in guitar construction, to watch the CA manufacturing videos from the early 2000s: “Updating the CA Story.”

I hate that this incredible experiment is over, but I am glad I slithered in while the window was still open and I own two of their incredible instruments—an electric Cargo and an early-edition OX—and I love ‘em both.