“Powerful, extremely versatile and creatively refreshing, it offers a ton of inspiration if you click with it”: LAG HyVibe 10 HV10ACE review

What is it?

French guitar maker LAG has always done things just a little differently, from the faintly gothic styling of its popular Tramontane acoustic guitars to the crisp, modern lines of its designs.

With the HyVibe 10, it's gone quite a bit further. As the name hints, the guitar sports a unique HyVibe preamp using technology developed by acoustic scientist Dr Adrien Mamou-Mani at the IRCAM Institute.

Like Yamaha’s TransAcoustic tech, the HyVibe preamp allows the user to add digital effects to acoustic playing – with the guitar’s own soundboard acting as a speaker. Essentially, the guitar becomes its own pedalboard and amp.

Specs

• Price:  $999 | £949 | €1,050 
• Made: China
• Body shape: Cutaway Auditorium
• Body top: Solid red cedar
• Top bracing: Spruce X-brace
• Back & sides: Khaya mahogany (laminated)
• Neck: Kyaha mahogany
• Scale/length: 25.6” (650 mm)
• Nut/width: Graphite / 1.7” (43mm)
• String spacing at bridge: 0.4”/ 10mm
• Fingerboard wood/Radius: Brankowood / 13.8 inches (350 mm)
• Body depth: 4.1”/ 105mm
• Finish: Satin natural
• Bridge/pins: Synthetic
• Tuning Machines: Sealed die-cast, 1:18 ratio
• Electronics: Undersaddle piezo / HyVibe preamp
• Weight: 4.9 lbs/2.23kg
• Case: Premium gigbag
• Left-handed options: Yes (LAG HyVibe 10 HV10-L-DCE)
• Contact: Lag Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★☆☆

Before we get into that, let’s first examine the acoustic guitar that provides the ‘chassis’ for the HyVibe tech. Based, as far as I can see, on the Tramontane 118 Series of guitars, the HyVibe 10 is an Auditorium-sized cutaway electro (think OM or 000-style) with a solid red cedar top, typically associated with a warm, rounded tone, plus laminated Khaya back and sides.

Sometimes known as African mahogany, Khaya is a commonly used substitute for the South American mahoganies that were used in the 20th-century golden era of guitar making.

And while solid body woods would have been a premium touch, many top makers – such as Takamine – place a lot of faith in the structural and sonic benefits of laminated woods for the back and sides, so it’s not necessarily a downgrade. Contours are crisply carved, including the raised centre section of the headstock, adding to the guitar’s quirky elan.

The feel and styling is crisply contemporary and the HyVibe 10 is an attractive, distinctive build. The body is Auditorium sized but the cutaway makes it feel somehow a touch more compact in use than traditional OMs and the like. The headstock is attached to the neck with a neat but quite steep scarf joint and the heel is also two-piece, as far as I can see. But it’s all deftly done and represents solid modern production luthiery.

The 20 frets are nicely polished and crowned and the fret-ends have been attentively rounded - especially important with chunky frets like these if they aren’t to feel like jagged roadbumps under your fingers. Inside the soundhole, braces and linings look good and only a few minor smears and glue marks here and there spoil the overall picture of a very tidy mid-market build.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Considered just as an acoustic instrument, the HyVibe 10 is a taut but comfortable drive. As mentioned, the cutaway design does make the guitar feel a bit more ergonomic in the lap than a traditional Auditorium-size guitar.

The feel is modern, a little Taylor-like perhaps, and the satin finish on the neck and body feels pleasantly tactile. There’s good access up the neck and the guitar intonates well past the 12th fret.

As fitted with 12-54 acoustic guitar strings, the guitar feels set up as a capable, approachable all-rounder – fingerstyle players might want to experiment with 11s to get extra slinkiness from the setup.

Sounds

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Sounds rating: ★★★☆☆

Played purely as an acoustic instrument, the HyVibe 10 has a clear, well-defined modern voice that emphasises upper mids. There’s a good, direct initial attack when playing a strummed chord then a strong upper midrange and treble presence that stops short of ‘honk’ but leaves me wanting just a little more sweet low end.

However, a cushion of bass is more the province of dreadnoughts and, overall, the sound is in line with what a decent, modern auditorium-sized acoustic should be.

But it’s the innocuous looking control panel, with an OLED screen, on the guitar’s shoulder that holds the key to what makes the HyVibe 10 strikingly different, sonically.

The HyVibe preamp (here in the newly updated, more powerful H2 form) takes the signal from the undersaddle piezo pickup and runs it through a powerful processor that then uses the guitar’s body as a speaker for effected sounds as well as the unplugged voice of the guitar itself – and the system runs off a rechargeable lithium battery offering up to a quoted 10 hours of play time.

It won’t be a surprise to learn that digital reverb is one of the primary sound-enhancing effects it offers, expanding the natural voice of the guitar with an aura of smooth hall-style reverb.

But you can also apply echo, tremolo, chorus, phaser, octaver, distortion, boost and ping pong delay – and there’s also a looper function, metronome, tuner. You can even turn your guitar into a Bluetooth music playback speaker you can play along to.

A quick tap on the datawheel-style knob in the centre of the preamp switches the HyVibe on, with only a second or two of boot-up time and you can use the onboard guitar tuner to get things started tunefully. I’d like to see a more positive indicator of correct pitch than aligning a ball between two vertical bars on the OLED screen but it works perfectly well.

Using the two left/right cursor buttons just under the screen, you can scroll away from the tuner and onto the Effects page, where things get really interesting.

First up is Reverb and I was impressed by the spacious ambience it creates via the guitar’s body - and hitting the central Option button lets you choose the Decay time of the ‘verb – as you might expect, different parameters are called up by this button when using the other effects.

There’s also an accompanying app that interfaces with the guitar and permits more detailed control of each effect – but more of that shortly.

Moving through the other effects, with default settings, I found the Chorus a touch thin and cold, the phaser quite strident and more like an auto-wah – but the tremolo and the echo (delay) effects proved inspiring as writing tools, generating ambience and rhythmic movement.

The Octaver effect also sparked creative ideas, turning the guitar into a quasi-bass if desired. And even though the Distortion effect won’t trouble the Klon for natural drive tones, its Mike Oldfield-style biting sizzle proved oddly addictive as a lead tool, more like a fuzz in some ways, while Boost provided a subtle and flattering lift.

However, plugging into my Boss acoustic amp, I'm rewarded with a real uplift in the substance and warmth of all the effects sounds on offer here and it’s a salutary reminder that the guitar body itself, while doing a remarkable job as a ‘speaker’, is always going to have certain limitations that a purpose-made amp or PA won’t.

In short, if you enjoy the effects from the guitar alone, you’ll enjoy them yet more when the LAG is amplified, making this a really tempting tool for touring solo acoustic artists who don’t want to lug effects boards around from gig to gig.

Whichever way you choose to hear them, the effects are fun, a bit baffling at times but also creatively empowering. But they really show their full potential in conjunction with the on-board looper.

With no floor pedals to operate the looper (the HV-S4 footswitch is an additional purchase), this function relies on the player setting the BPM and time signature in the HyVibe’s Metronome page then scrolling back to the Looper page (a slightly clunky bit of U/I) then activating record using the right-hand button under the screen.

You then get a one-bar count-in with a click and then the guitar records what you play for a pre-selected number of bars, then ceases recording and begins playback automatically at the end of that cycle.

By hitting the record button again, you can record up to three overdub layers on top of the original loop with recording for each overdub commencing the next time the loop cycles round to its start point once again.

The base loop layer is recorded using the effect you currently have selected for normal play - but thereafter you can select a fresh effect (or none) to use when overdubbing on top of the previous loops, opening up the possibility of building layers of different sounds as you go, to create a looping performance that sounds more like a full band.

The accompanying HyVibe app for iOS and Android plus MacOS (versions 11.0 and higher) really opens up the editing and tone sculpting possibilities of the effects and functions above – and, as it connects to the guitar via BlueTooth there are no clunky USB cables to plug in.

As well as letting you set the metronome tempo (which governs the looper) from the app’s main page and also trigger recordings, it displays the nine effects that appear in the guitar’s OLED screen and permits you to deep-edit them, opening up functions like dry/wet and EQ controls on the Echo for example.

There are also a few extra effects you can select such as a 12-string emulator and things like noise gates and Notch filters can also be added to the setup of your default effects.

You can also combine effects together using the ‘Modify’ function to create a distorted version of the default phaser, to take but one possible example.

As with other apps that perform a similar editing function, the app really is the easiest way to get the best from the HyVibe and using it alongside the guitar is recommended – although the guitar is also MIDI compatible.

Verdict

The Hyvibe 10 offers an awful lot to explore and there’s serious potential here, especially for solo performers who want to maximise their sonic firepower on stage.

I can see some players building an entire set around what this guitar can do while, for others, it could obviate the need to bring along a pedalboard and acoustic amp to gigs where effects play a big role.

On another level, it’s a great writing tool to develop ideas on, especially when the looper is brought into play, and really shines during practice sessions, permitting you to sharpen soloing skills over self-record backing loops.

The only things to weigh against those benefits are the sometimes slightly synthetic quality of some of the effect tones – though on the whole the sounds are good – and potential buyers also want to consider if they really need quite this much sonic variety, as you can get a basic self-generated effects guitar with reverb and chorus from other makers such as Yamaha, for less. Overall, though, it’s a very compelling sonic exploration tool.

MusicRadar verdict: Powerful, extremely versatile and creatively refreshing, the HyVibe 10 offers a ton of inspiration if you click with it. Yes, it’s not for purists, but that should be obvious and while up against stiff competition in purely acoustic terms in this priceband, the sheer breadth of its idea-making sounds makes it a really compelling choice for sonic explorers and bold solo artists.

Also try

Yamaha FGCTAVT TransAcoustic FG Cutaway
Price $879 | £863 | €899
Yamaha led the way in self-generated effects with its TransAcoustic tech and if reverb and chorus are the limit of your needs, this cutaway dread is a very credible choice with rock-solid quality.

LAVA Music ME 4 Carbon Smart Guitar
Price $999 | £1,049 | €1,199
The weather resistant Super AirSonic carbon fibre unibody of this innovative guitar makes it slickly contemporary and it boasts looping and onboard effects, backing tracks and more.

Fender Acoustasonic Standard Telecaster
Price $/£589/€
Taking a different approach to the LAG HyVibe, the Acoustasonic range offers acoustic tones in an electric style body, aiming more for sonic faithfulness to classic acoustic and electric guitar sounds rather than a raft of effects and creative tools. This Mexican-made Fender Acoustasonic Player Telecaster is also attractively priced.

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