Back in the Saddle Again Ultimate Guitar
Guitarists are lucky – we already play an instrument that we can take and play anywhere with us. But the best travel guitars enhance and refine that concept to offer the ultimate in portability. Whether you want to take your guitar with you on holiday, work trips or have something more compact for the home, there are some high quality choices out there. We've selected the very best and they're a surprisingly varied group of guitars – from full-scale electric guitars to ¾-size acoustic electrics.
There's a good reason for this variety; a travel guitar needs to be portable, but how it achieves that can be decided by a number of factors. We've taken them all into consideration with our choices for the best travel guitars you can buy right now.
- The best acoustic guitars for beginners
- Freshen up with the best acoustic guitar strings
Best travel guitars: Guitar World recommends
Over a decade after the design's launch, the Taylor GS Mini-e Koa is still a benchmark for travel guitars. Now including Taylor's Expression System with on-board tuner, it's a great guitar for home, away, gigging, recording, songwriting… it could easily become your favorite guitar.
The Yamaha CSF3M is a rarity; a travel acoustic featuring solid back and sides at a very competitive price. Like the GS Mini, it sounds much bigger than its smaller scale suggests and combined with a comfortable, roomy neck experience, it's another travel guitar that's great for a wide range of players and needs.
Best travel guitars: Product guide
Although Yamaha doesn't market its CSF series explicitly as 'travel guitars', they have created a class-leading example with this short-scale folk electro-acoustic. Solid woods and a 105mm body depth combine to set it apart from much of the competition.
We found a rich tonal character and impressive projection with a 16-inch radius neck that feels roomy and works well for both fingerstyle and chord work. The Yamaha passive piezo pickup here offers no onboard preamp but impresses with a pleasing reflection of the CSF3M's strengths.
Rounding out the package here is Yamaha's hard bag to provide a reassuringly protective case for a guitar that should provide you years of inspiration, at home or on the go.
A firm favorite of Ed Sheeran - although he has made a move to Lowden recently - the Martin LX1E is Martins pint-sized offering (and one of our top picks for the best 3/4 acoustic guitars), delivering the outstanding built quality you'd expect from the acoustic giant and a quality amplified sound.
This guitar is made with a solid Sitka spruce top and high-pressure laminate back and sides, as well as a composite neck. It may not have the elegant looks of the D-28 or HD-35, but it is incredibly strong and damn near indestructible. This mighty little guitar will undoubtedly handle any of the harsh conditions bestowed upon it.
Read our full Martin LX1E Little Martin review
Taylor's GS Mini was ahead of most of the pack when it launched in 2010, and it still stands up as a masterful design from the company's design wizard Andy Powers. It's a benchmark example of a guitar that sounds far fuller than its dimensions - aided by the slight arch of its back.
With spruce and mahogany options proving popular, the Koa stands out for the visual clout of its dramatic figuring. A solid top, layered back and sides, sapele neck and ebony fingerboard provide a rich tonal recipe here. With Taylor's Expression System preamp system (including a handy tuner) and the high quality included gigbag rounding out a superb package for one of the company's best value models. Left-handed models are available too – yay!
The Silent Guitar is an unusual proposition with a detachable frame for folding down. It's also designed to be plugged in for amplification or via headphones – it makes very little acoustic sound of its own. This has the advantage for quiet practice but the Silent Guitar's SRT and pickup blend system also shines via a PA or acoustic combo live for surprisingly organic tones to mimic a real acoustic being mic'd.
Its low action, 43mm nut width and slim neck will suit electric players, if they can accept its untraditional looks. Onboard chorus and reverb further enhance the SLG200S's usability as a travelling companion.
Blackstar have made a guitar!? Yes indeed, the guitar amp company joined forces with fellow Brits Gordon Smith Guitars on a down-sized electric; 20.7-inch scale with a ukulele-sized body is certainly compact but the result stacks up comfortably well with a full-size neck.
It's a one piece body and neck design to aid resonance and we really like design touches like the tortoiseshell-like plastic binding and the playing comfort of the matt neck, sides and back. It's also great to see a coil-split on the humbucker pickup for tonal versatility through an amp – you can even buy the Carry-on as a package with Blackstar's Fly3 mini amp.
Read the full Blackstar Carry-On Deluxe Pack review
Another collaboration between two successful guitar brands, Traveler already have a formidable reputation for electric travel guitars and ESP build some of the finest guitars for heavy rock and metal around with its EC series; the LTD EC-1 is the combination of those skills.
The full-scale singlecut model first surfaced in 2016 and is now available in Vintage Black with gold hardware – a Traveler design calling card is to cut down on overall length by placing locking tuners within the body design. The pickup here is an ESP-designed active humbucker, so it's ideal for higher gain tones and cutting lead work with the inbuilt headphone amp. It even features a bevelled cutaway for higher fret access.
This is the third entry for Yamaha on this list, but we felt it needed to be included. Yamaha has taken their ever-popular APX and shrunk it down to create the APXT2. This 3/4 sized acoustic is one of the smallest on this list, measuring in at only 34 inches, and will happily fit in most traveling situations.
The onboard pickup is surprisingly good on the APXT2 and offers a tone far greater than the unplugged sound. The preamp also comes with a handy built-in tuner, meaning you don't have to pack any extra gear. The satin finish not only looks great but is very smooth to play. In fact, the whole neck is very familiar, and if you have played Yamaha guitars in the past, then you'll get on with how this feels. It also comes in a range of different colors, just like its big brother, the APX500. So if you are a fan of the APX series or are looking for a unique-looking travel guitar, then it's worth checking these out.
With street prices under $450, the performance for price here makes the Little CJ stand up high with the bigger brands. And while some of the pricier competition offers a bit more low end, the friendly playability and valuable features like precise 18:1 ratio tuners really make a difference.
The V neck profile works very well for providing comfort on the shorter scale, while the Fishman Presys II is a cut above the company's Sonitone system we often see on sub-$500 electro-acoustic guitars, helping this guitar sound like a bigger model live. Alongside bass, treble and phase controls, the onboard tuner further sweetens a great deal.
Read the full Cort Little CJ Walnut OPH review
Whatever you think of Ed Sheeran's music, he has great taste in luthier's. George Lowden actually designed the Wee Lowden travel-size guitar for the songwriter and their friendship blossomed into a full series of guitars in 2019.
The S03 has had a refresh for 2021 – the 'S' stands for small body and the latest 24.8-inch scale model features a solid cedar top but with a rosewood and mahogany layering at the back and sides this time. An impressively full sound is matched with the quality of the LR Baggs VTC system for plugging in, and with the cutaway design this is one of the best travel-size acoustics for live performance.
Read the full Sheeran By Lowden SO3 review
Best travel guitars: Buying advice
What makes a great travel guitar?
A travel guitar's portability can be due to a smaller body, lighter weight and shorter scale (this is the distance from the guitar's nut to its saddle) but a guitar can still be great for carrying around with you and have a full-scale.
Having said that, acoustic travel guitars tend to have a shorter scale and smaller bodies to be portable, but they will still be tuned and play like a regular guitar. Indeed, the best travel guitars we have selected in this guide all shine for their playability as well as tone so they don't take much getting used to.
Electric travel guitars can usually plug into guitar amps and PAs but some have their own inbuilt amps to use headphones with, making them all-in-one practice tools.
Can I gig with a travel guitar?
Absolutely, and many acoustic travel guitars include inbuilt pickups and preamps to allow for this. Ed Sheeran is one of the most famous living guitarists on the planet and uses a small-scale travel guitar onstage and in the studio. He likes them so much he's even got his own series of them now.
Even electric travel guitars designed for headphone practice can be used with amps if you wish, so they could be a great choice for travelling to jams or impromptu gigs with.
What is the best travel guitar for me?
All travel guitars are portable and all the guitars are great to play; but all excel in different ways. For example, some are going to be better for gigging with, while others are great for practice with headphones. So consider what you need from a travel guitar; do you want an acoustic or electric guitar? Would you like to use it for recording? The best news is whatever your needs, we've got the right travel guitar for you in this guide.
Source: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/best-travel-guitars
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