I have been traveling on business for years. In my early days of my career I would go for weeks on end stuck in strange towns, cooped up in crappy hotels looking for things to do during my evenings and weekends. I wanted to take my guitar with me but the thought of dragging a full size guitar on the road was a major barrier. Not to mention that I wasn't willing to let the baggage handlers handle my $5000 guitar. I looked at smaller travel like guitars in the past but the major issue for me was amplification. You can play an electric guitar "dry" but it definitely takes away from the fun. In the past few years music software companies have started to come out with packages that let your laptop become a full effects processor and amplifier all in one. With applications like
IK Multimedia's Amplitude I can throw on a pair of headphones, plug right into my Macbook Pro and I get Hendrix, Page or any other guitar player's sound that I like. Given the progress on the software front I decided to revisit the idea of a travel guitar and much to my surprise I found a few really cool options. The one I liked the best was the
Traveler brand. I bought the EG-1 model which has a mahogany body & neck, rosewood fingerboard, 25.5" scale(almost full length), dual humbucker pick-up, 22 jumbo frets, standard tuning and the feel of a regular guitar. It even has built in electronics (9V battery) that allows me to plug my headphones directly into the guitar without using the computer. The advantage is that I can sit on the beach or in the airport lounge and play with a clean or distorted tone. Admittedly, the sound through the built in electronics is a bit cheesy but it does the trick in a pinch. The EG-1 comes with a small, padded case and a few pockets that would allow for a laptop, power cords and headphones. It won't fit my 15" Macbook Pro......but I bet it would fit the
Macbook Air....hmm..this may end up costing me more money than I thought. Oh...the EG-1 is pretty reasonably priced at just under $600 (Canadian) with all the taxes.
Gonna give it a whirl next week while visiting Maui....
Posted via email from Mark Cunningham's Posterous
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