If you’re the kind of person that loves adventure but wants to improve his/her guitar skills all the time, you need a travel practice guitar. But you may prefer practicing at home and using more than just your guitar to get the perfect sound, and if that’s the case, you might want a delay pedal. This article discusses all you’d want to know about travel guitars, so let’s get into that.
Full scale-length
Usually, travel guitars are those that are small enough so that you can carry them everywhere, but they also do that while offering you a full-sized fretboard. They only compromise on sound volume. This is why they still feel like a regular-sized guitar and they can still be played by those with bigger hands.
But the travel guitars that are full-sized are not as compact as others. This means you will have to sacrifice a bit on the portability side. To reduce the overall size, some travel guitars use smaller fretboards. Reducing the size of the fretboard can be done in two ways, the first of which is to reduce the number of frets.
This leads, however, to the player having the possibility to play less musical notes. Another way to make the fretboard shorter is to reduce the space between the frets while keeping their number the same. The result is a guitar that is slightly more difficult to be played by those with larger fingers, but it still offers enough variation in terms of notes.
There are guitarists that are happy with these types of fretboards, while others hate them. Playing on a smaller fretboard feels differently and it almost resembles other acoustic instruments, such as ukuleles.
Acoustic or electric
One main thing that travel guitars offer is versatility. And that can also be seen in the different types of guitars that can be found – you can get an acoustic one or an electric guitar. Choosing between the two is a question of preference most of the times. However, if you want to have the best out of the two worlds, you can choose an electric guitar with a piezo pickup.
This kind of pickup works differently as it captures the strings vibration directly and it thus offers a more realistic sound, closer to acoustic guitars. An electric guitar with such a pickup can also be played silently.
If you prefer to have an acoustic guitar, there is a large number of models to choose from. You can choose a guitar that has a similar shape to a full-sized acoustic model. However, this kind of guitar is usually larger than the alternatives and it’s also very loud if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t want to attract attention.
Being 30 to 40 inches long, an acoustic travel guitar is significantly larger than an electric one.
Silent models
Depending on how you like playing your guitar, you should know that travel guitars are usually less noisy and are ideal when you’re staying in a hotel or somewhere where you don’t want to disturb your neighbors. You can take out your travel guitar in the middle of the night without having to worry about someone knocking on your door asking you to go to sleep.
Most travel guitars are quieter than their bigger brothers, and furthermore, there are certain models that allow you to be even quieter. If you have an electric small guitar, you can plug in a set of headphones and play it as you wish, with only you being able to hear it.
Even better, if you have a travel guitar that also has some cool features like distortion, reverb or delay in it, you can get some beautiful music coming to your ears through your headphones. An extra benefit that silent travel guitars have is that they are even more compact.
And that is because they don’t need the whole body to produce resonance because they rely more on the technology they have to deliver the sound. You can find both acoustic and electric travel guitars that are silent.
Collapsable guitars
Certain manufacturers saw how people are obsessed with keeping their beloved instruments in good shape, especially while traveling. That’s why they came up with travel guitars that can be taken apart and rebuilt back quickly. This has a great effect in making sure that your guitar doesn’t break during transportation, and because you can keep it with you at all times, the chances of losing your guitar drop significantly.
Most such guitars employ a technology in which you can detach the neck and put it back in place following some easy steps. Such smartly-designed guitars can be put back together within 10 seconds by only screwing some bolts back, without any tools.
This kind of guitar is more portable, often safer to transport and it also comes with a small case that it fits into and that can be worn as a backpack as well. Of course, such a guitar is harder to keep in tune, because you always take the neck off and put it back. But a quality collapsible guitar will allow you to tune it back quickly.
They have a lot of benefits
A travel guitar is great because you can take it with you wherever you go, but that’s not the only good thing that it does. It’s one of the easiest ways to get away from boredom and get to learn that riff that you need to practice on. While you’re stuck in stationary traffic, or you’re waiting for someone, you should always have a travel guitar with you.
You can’t sleep all the time during those long flights, and if that’s the case, you have the opportunity to get your small, silent travel guitar out and start practicing. And this is another great advantage of the travel guitar – it makes you feel free. It allows you to play anywhere and it lets you choose if you want others to hear you or not.
Having a travel guitar in your collection will let you play in your house, at a friend’s place, in front of your beloved ones, or alone in a small place. The versatility that it offers is spectacular.
