First a foldable MIDI keyboard, now a travel guitar with a jointed, removable neck so it folds into a case:

Stewart Guitars Stow-Away (via)

Detach this sucker’s neck and you can fit the guitar into a briefcase, not to mention terrify your friends. (Oh, for the love of God, you broke your guitar!) Bonus: heightened terror alerts won’t make people think you’re carrying a gun. They make a similar model called the Road-Runner.

But while we’re at it, what else could you put in your mobile guitar studio carry bag? Here are a few suggestions from CDM posts past:

  1. Vox DA5 miniature practice amp (see comments for similar models)
  2. Fender keychain pocket tuner
  3. iPod Nano with iRocker pocket tuner, metronome, virtual chord book, fingerings, and scales
  4. Treo running miniMusic software for scoring, composing, beats
  5. Laptop running Guitar Rig 2, made easier by Guitar Rig’s bundled, compact interface/foot pedal combo. And soon, Intel MacBooks should be supported

Guitar and bass players, what’s in your bag?

Updated: Kevin of the Nettles sends us details of his rig, with some terrific tips for an all-in-one music rig for the road.

9 responses to “Foldable Travel Guitars and the Mobile Guitar Studio”

  1. Kevin says:

    How do I send you a JPEG of my travel practice rig?

    Cheers,

    Kevin

  2. cobalt says:

    I've been recently interested in picking up a travel guitar, to get my guitar fix when I'm away. These are a couple other designs that I thought were interesting. Traveler Guitar makes non-folding travel guitars of different kinds. The Outdoor Guitar is a folding acoustic guitar that looks particularly promising. The Stow-Away Guitar featured here is the most compact though.

    http://www.travelerguitar.com/index.html http://www.brunner-guitars.com/outdoor.html

    As for other gear, there are a couple new compact flat amps running around. The Zvex Nanohead has a built in speaker and is pretty small.

    And I thought this was an interesting forum thread, describing an online forum mediated transfer of an Outdoor Guitar with apparently good results.

  3. cobalt says:

    Sorry, here's the link I left off my last comment.

    http://www.guitarseminars.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/014

  4. Thomas says:

    Unfortunately, nobody makes a decent travel bass. The headless thing messes with me, Steinbergers have weird balance and ergonomic issues, and the Traveler or Sinsonido basses are just silly looking.

    But since all of my pedals (including the looper) are battery powered or can be replaced by a laptop/Tascam US122 combo, I guess it's portable enough that I can just carry a regular 34" bass.

  5. […] What’s in Your Bag? Foldable Travel Guitars and the Mobile Guitar Studio [Create Digital Music] […]

  6. Gianni says:

    that's very cool! I wonder if the strings might scratch the finish when you pack the 'thing' away…as a personal choice I'd go for Amplitube 2 instead of Guitar rig.

  7. Guitarista says:

    That doesn't look so intelligent to me. What kind of shape will your strings be in? How much time to you want to spend re-tuning it? Cn you really expect any kind of consistency in your set up if you remove the neck? I'd just as soon carry a low end steinberger – or even a full sized squier – over that. If you're serious about a travel guitar, why not something like a lapstick? (http://www.lapstick.com/)

  8. kelly says:

    well, for starters, lapsticks are at least $200 more. Secondly, lapsticks are only 20 inches long. That's it, so it's not going to feel like a real guitar, and probably screws with your technique/form. I have had my eye on a lapstick though because i travel a lot. But since I haven't had either in my hands I can't really say, just my understanding of the two.

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