Chuck’s Travel Guitar build

[Chuck]

In a very dangerous move, I’m starting on a build with two already in motion. Mind you this one is going to take quite a while as I know there will be challenges along the way. So, what is it?

I travel reasonably often for work and like to spend evenings in hotel rooms songwriting (I know, wild and crazy guy I am). I’ve got one of those very small keyboards I can put in my carry-on, and also a decent little USB mic, but it bugs me to not have a guitar. Now I realise there are lots of travel guitars, but I have quite specific criteria: it must be a full scale length, and it must fit inside a carry-on bag (ie 48cm is about as long as practical, and shorter is better). For overnight work trips I don’t want to check bags in.

The obvious – and only - answer was something that folded or was in two bits. So I had a max of 96cm to play with, but I started looking at the 90cm mark. Given scale length is 64.8cm, that leaves me with about 25cm for a headstock and also a little bit of space behind the bridge. Then the real challenge is halving it. A guitar neck, even with a shortish headstock is still almost 65cm. That led to me thinking about having a neck that was only about an octave long. Given this is purely to muck around with ideas for songwriting I’m more than happy to forego widdling around up the fretboard!

A trip to Anagote timbers in Sydney (my favourite timber place) yesterday, and scored myself a nice plank of rock maple (enough for more than a couple of necks) and a piece or Surian Cedar – a light weight timber that the Anagote guys thought would work well for the body.

And now I’ve roughly chopped them up as 45cm lengths. Next step will be slowly but surely shaping the neck (the heel of the neck effectively starts at the 8th fret, and then joins from the 9th to the 13th fret) - I did consider some kind of hinge, but it got too complicated. I’ll be installing frets direct to the rock maple, no cap. I’ll also be doing without a truss rod, my theory being that I’ll only have it strung up under tension for an hour or so at a time – but we’ll see how that works out! The pic gives you a rough idea of how it compares to a regular instrument.



Oh, and the body will be shaped a bit but I think I’ll make something that will act as a thigh rest for it – maybe out of an aluminium bar that will slot into holes on the side. Other things going through my mind are a 4+2 headstock and perhaps a single humbucker that I can split.

One more thing I’m thinking is to use a locking nut and a slotted bridge. That way when the guitar is disassembled the ball-ends of the strings can be just pulled out of the bridge, and the locking nut will keep everything in place until the next time it’s used.

Obviously a lot of half-baked ideas in this one so I know I’ll be leaning on the PBG brains trust to help at times! Stay tuned for sporadic updates...

[ThreeBbass]

Hey Chuck,
sounds like an interesting project ...
did you consider using a headless setup to avoid the headstock length and give you a bit more fretboard to play with?

[Chuck]

Hey Chuck,
sounds like an interesting project ...
did you consider using a headless setup to avoid the headstock length and give you a bit more fretboard to play with?

I did, but was struggling to find hardware I liked. I figure this project may end up with a couple of variations and the headless one would certainly get me some more frets!

The only other thing is the idea of having a slotted bridge so I can remove strings easily - perhaps harder on a headless setup (although I have to say I'm not overly familiar with them). I'd prefer to not restring every time I guess

[dave.king1]

I wonder how the guys on the xray machine will feel about seeing 6 garrottes in your luggage.

In my working days I had some very interesting conversations with these guys if I forgot to put my test equipment in checked luggage or couriered back to the office.

For those who have worked as a sparky or voice tech doing voice grade cabling an F Set could possible look like a bomb when xrayed and very funny when you try to explain what it is and they ever so carefully open the case

[Zandit75]

This is what you need!!

[Chuck]

This is what you need!!

I did look at those, but then there's no room for clothes etc in the bag. There are quite a few like that, some with nifty hinge solutions that I also investigated, but it's just too much guitar relative to the bag!

[Chuck]

I wonder how the guys on the xray machine will feel about seeing 6 garrottes in your luggage.

In my working days I had some very interesting conversations with these guys if I forgot to put my test equipment in checked luggage or couriered back to the office.

For those who have worked as a sparky or voice tech doing voice grade cabling an F Set could possible look like a bomb when xrayed and very funny when you try to explain what it is and they ever so carefully open the case

I never thought of that! Should make my first trip interesting if I ever complete it!!

[Simon Barden]

Certainly don't build an alarm clock into it for a steampunk look.

[DrNomis_44]

Hey Chuck, feel free to check out my Headless Guitar build thread when you have some free time if you haven't already done so mate.

[Chuck]

Hey Chuck, feel free to check out my Headless Guitar build thread when you have some free time if you haven't already done so mate.

Cheers Doc, I have had a good look and maybe I shouldn't right off the headless approach. I'll see what kind of a plan I can come up with around it. The link to the one you bought in your thread makes things much easier with the slotted headstock as I really want to be able to remove strings easily when carrying it in two pieces.