[leadin]The guitar is the fundamental campfire musical instrument. Traveler makes guitars for the traveler in mind, with super light models that can go anywhere. We put a few to the test.[/leadin]
Traveler Guitar, founded in 1992, has a solid history in the music industry—making portability a focus while not sacrificing the sound quality of its instruments. It’s only in recent months that the brand pushed into what seems an obvious market niche in the outdoor industry.
Attending Outdoor Retailer’s Winter Market (ORWM) in January and securing a distribution deal with Liberty Mountain, it’s begun connecting with #VanLife-rs and #Dirtbag-s who seem to be receiving the ultra-portable guitars favorably.
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I’ve had the opportunity to test three Traveler Guitar products since ORWM — the AG-105 EQ Acoustic, the Escape Mark III Electric, and the Ultra-Light Electric guitars.
Style-wise, this one looks the most like what you’d expect when buying a guitar but with the tuning pegs moved to hand screws below the bridge and the head removed altogether. It feels small, certainly, but has a noticeably full sound despite the size. All three guitars feature a full fret board, pickups, and this one has a built-in tuner.
While Clapton might not choose this for an unplugged show, it’ll certainly do the job for campfire sessions and coffee shop gigs.
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The Escape Mark III, like the AG-105, doesn’t depart much from the traditional look of modern guitars but, with tuning keys moved into the body—facing up and recessed alongside the strings—it requires a bit of an adjustment for those of us who lazily brace our strum hands there.
It’s also a little more difficult to tune up if you have fat fingers. While the portability benefits and the less frequent need to tune (thanks to the fact that the keys don’t get bumped as often) outweigh the hassle, it’s important to note that bigger hands might do well to invest in a manual string winder in order to get a better grip on the keys.
The Escape Mark III probably won’t be a go-to axe for backcountry campfire jams because the AG-105 and Ultra-Light guitars are too perfect for that duty, but it would be a great fit for touring musicians, festival goers, car campers, and the like who may have room for an amp amongst the coolers and camp chairs. It retails for under $500 and has a comparable sound to other, full-size guitars in that price range.
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This one’s just stinking cool. It looks like a cigar-box ukulele, has a full fret board, rich sound, and weighs a paltry 3 lbs. 12 oz. including the gig bag (2lbs.14oz. without the bag). It’s 28 inches long and has the same playable area as any other guitar.
In order to properly test this little guy (read: I found a cool companion toy), I bought a tiny, $30 headphone amp from Amazon and dropped it in the gig bag pocket. The whole system then slid in my backpack and I carried it out on a day hike.
Once I got out into the woods, I realized one other perk of this system—you can rock as hard as you want and never disturb anyone. Conversely, you can rock as hard as you want and never get discovered by the producer camping two sites over but that’s a risk we all take in the forest.UK company Snap Dragon claims to have created a “no-compromise travel ” – we find out if it should be in your carry-on this summer.
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Going on holiday might be a chance for us to get away from it all, but plenty of players don’t want to get away from their s when they’re enjoying a well-earned break, as the continuing popularity of travel s in all shapes and sizes attests.
Travel s are of course, designed to be compact and that often leads to the creation of instruments that look a bit strange, or have inherent limitations. However, Essex firm Snap Dragon s claims to offer a “no compromise” approach to travel s and to put that to the test, we’ll be checking out the company’s most popular model, the Mini Traxe, and its flagship, the Traxe Solo.
Certainly, the initial impressions are favourable – both instruments look effectively like a scaled-down conventional , complete with teeny three-a-side headstocks, full-size necks and single-cut bodies. They’re not exactly compact in this configuration, but thanks to a pivoting neck system, both s fold up and fit comfortably inside their small carry cases, which Snap Dragon confirms will pass muster as hand luggage with budget airlines.
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Both instruments have certain features in common. The maple necks are 24-inch scale, 20-fret jobs with a very modern 12-inch radius. The frets themselves are nickel-silver, while a zero fret is there to help with intonation and six 18:1 locking machine heads are designed to keep things stable.
They each sport the same single-cut semi-hollow design with a large soundhole on the bass side, and they share a bowl-style polycarbonate back and aluminium centre-block. Where they differ most strikingly is on top. The more electric-style Solo has a polycarbonate top, while the Mini has a wood top made of ‘timboo’ – a sustainable timber alternative made of compressed bamboo fibres.
The Mini has a polymer top-loading bridge with a plastic compensated saddle. The only electronics are a passive undersaddle piezo that feeds out of an endpin jack socket, but the Solo has a lot more going on.
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Definitely more of an ‘electric’ instrument, the Solo’s two coil-splittable twin-rail humbuckers are paired with a three-way toggle and common volume and tone controls to offer a wide array of electric sounds, while at the bridge end we get the reassuring bulk of an EverTune bridge.
A feature on a range instruments from ESP and other rock-focused makers, the EverTune is a mechanical system designed to maintain string tension regardless of the pressure exerted on the string – in theory, this should mean that the Solo should be perfectly in tune when it’s unfolded.
The same can’t be said of the Mini Traxe – upon removing it from its gigbag and snapping the neck into place, it’s clear that you’ll want to take a tuner with you on holiday – though make sure it’s an app or a stompbox, as that bijou headstock has no room for a clip-on unit. Once that’s done and dusted we can get around to playing – and while this definitely wants to be an ‘acoustic’ with its phosphor-bronze strings, the neck certainly doesn’t feel like an old flat-top.
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With its 12-inch radius and flat U-shaped profile, this has more in common with a JEM than a D-18 in terms of playability, which certainly lends an interesting crossover vibe to proceedings.
As you’d expect for a bowl-backed with a three-inch body depth and an aluminum centre-block, it doesn’t exactly blow you away acoustically, but the wood top certainly helps alleviate some synthetic characteristics.
Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but plugging in gives you more of a feel that you’re playing an acoustic instrument – there’s plenty of piezo quack, that’s for sure, but it’s definitely warmer, with more bass response than the unplugged tone.
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The EverTune bridge has demonstrated its ability to maintain tuning under various extreme conditions, but doing so on a neck that’s been flipped 360 degrees with the strings not under tension seems a tall order. And yet when we snap the Solo’s neck into place it takes a second or two for the internal gubbins to do their thing but lo and behold, we have a that’s rock solidly in tune.
Strung with electric strings, the Solo’s neck, near-identical to the Mini’s, is a much less confusing proposition in this context – though fans of fat vintage neck profiles and rounded radii won’t be in love, it’s a very playable and smooth plank.
That said, you won’t get much love beyond the 12th fret, even with the generous cutaway. The pivoting neck construction means that the neck is effectively sat fully on top of the body at the join, so unless you’ve got fingers like ET, stretching your hand around while keeping your thumb on the back is nearly impossible at the dusty end. Or maybe that’ll be the sandy end if you’re playing on the beach.
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With plastic and aluminium construction, the less said about the Solo’s unplugged tone the better, but it’s meant to be plugged in – and that’s when it comes alive. Running into our test Fender and Marshall amps, the twin-rail humbuckers pair well with the lively resonance of the body to offer a tone that’s very usable, especially with lashings of Tube Screamer and amp overdrive in play. The sustain isn’t bad either.
Pulling up the volume control to engage the coil-split offers convincingly twang-y single-coil tones, and with a nice taper on the pot itself, there’s real sonic versatility here.
Okay, this isn’t going to replace your favourite full-fat Les Paul or Strat any time soon, and the downside of the EverTune bridge is that any kind of altered tuning is going to require an Allen key and the instruction manual… but
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