Cort Modern Black TBK Cutaway — Masterpiece Series Electro-Acoustic Guitar

The Cort Modern Black TBK is the aesthetic outlier in Cort’s boutique-calibre Masterpiece line-up. Where its stablemates lean on traditional bursts and natural gloss, the TBK (Trans Black) sports a sleek onyx hue that nods to contemporary stage design as much as to luthier pedigree. Beneath the surface lies a torrefied Sitka soundboard, solid black-stained mahogany chassis, sculpted player-port, ergonomic arm bevel, and LR Baggs Anthem Stage Pro electronics. This 3 000-word dossier dissects every element: origin story, body geometry, tonewood orchestration, bracing science, comfort engineering, electronic architecture, sustainability metrics, and the ownership arc promised by Cort’s lifetime structural warranty.

1. Genesis & Design Intent — An Acoustic for the Post-Analog Stage

The Masterpiece Series was conceived to collapse the distance between one-bench boutique builds and high-tolerance factory consistency. When the design committee tackled a modern, darker-voiced stage guitar, three mandates surfaced:

1. Maintain the acoustic nuance required in unplugged settings.
2. Integrate player-side monitoring without external wedges.
3. Adopt a visual language that pairs with LED walls and matte-black pedalboards.

The Modern Black TBK is the materialization of those goals. Each unit spends three days in Cort’s Korean custom lab, where resonance plots are matched, brace tap-tones captured, and a final carbon-date-style “spectral signature” is archived for warranty traceability.

2. Body Architecture — Grand Auditorium Fundamentals, Modern Ergonomics

Dimensionally, the TBK follows the company’s grand-auditorium blueprint: 16″ lower bout, 11 ½″ waist, 4 ⅝″ tail depth tapering to 3 ⅞″ at the neck block. Why GA instead of dread? Because GAs merge the flattering bass of a big box with the mid-range focus broadcasters and FOH engineers crave. A long-swept Venetian cutaway gifts unfettered access to fret 20, critical for modern chord-melody voicings.

3. Player-Port Engineering — Hearing Yourself Without Wedges

On the upper bass bout, a teardrop player-port is milled at a 17° rake, then chamfered to a 6 mm radius lip. Internal CFD (computational-fluid dynamics) showed a 30 / 70 pressure split: 30 % of cabinet air is redirected toward the player, 70 % continues through the primary sound-hole. Outcome: a 2.8 dB near-field bump with zero measurable front-of-house loss. Finger-stylists report reduced right-arm tension because they no longer over-pluck to hear nuance.

4. Tonewood Composition — Torrefied Sitka × Black-Stained Mahogany

Top. AAAAA Sitka spruce undergoes low-oxygen torrefaction at 175 °C for four hours. Volatiles exit, grain stiffens, and the tap-response echoes that of a 40-year-old top.
Back & Sides. African mahogany, pressure-vacuum stained in an eco solvent before assembly, delivering a noir ribbon you can still see under the trans-black gloss. Mahogany’s quick velocity of sound keeps bass tight while mid-range glows with woody warmth—necessary to offset the visual coolness.
Neck. One-piece torrefied mahogany, reinforced with twin carbon rods for torsional integrity.

5. Bracing Science — Advanced Scalloped X with Maple Flying Bars

Primary X-braces are Adirondack spruce carved to a feather-edge 2 mm at the tips. A pair of maple “flying bars” span the port shoulder, rebalancing asymmetric airflow. The resultant top mass is 182 g (±2 g), 12 g lighter than a non-ported GA, translating to quicker transient response—essential for percussive thumb slaps and ghost notes.

Specifications