|
|
#1
05-04-2018, 10:15 AM
|
|||
|
|||
DIY Travel Guitar
We are going on a trip this summer, and I have been looking at travel guitars. After looking at many, I decided...hey, what can be so hard about that...so I decided to build a guitar-object that I could take along on the trip. Now I know just how difficult it is to make a good sounding, guitar-object.
I was influenced by many designs, but most by Sam Radding's Go Guitar...so here is the front view: Trav Guit Front.jpg I had an old electric guitar neck from a previous project, which I paired up with material from my local home center. Basically I made a plywood box with some parts from 2x4's. The top was 1/8 inch plywood, which I had thinned down to .1 inch and glued on some vee bracing. Boy, did it sound bad... So I unglued the top and threw it away. Then I bought a 2x6 that looked like it was quarter sawn, at least one end, and I guessed it was spruce.. So I sliced it on my table saw, and glued it, then thinned to about .100 inches. I used light x-bracing. And it sounds almost respectable. It has some bass and some treble and some sustain. Neither Taylor nor Martin have anything to fear from my travel guitar, but it may do the job, at least for one trip. Here is a view of the back, showing the two screws that are removed to dis-attach the neck for air travel (patent not-pending). I am calling this a Guitaway Guitar, which may be the most clever bit in the whole project. Trav Guit Back.jpg
__________________
Angie 
|
|
#4
05-04-2018, 03:57 PM
|
|||
|
|||
Well, yes, I did not want it to look like an electric guitar in drag...and I wanted to cut the overall length some. So I glued some maple to the side of the headstock, and overlaid it with some thin mahogany. That way I could make a mini headstock with the tuners on two sides.
The overall length is 37 inches, with the body length by itself being 20 inches, so taken apart it will fit in a carryaboard suitcase. The scale length inherited from the electric neck is 25-1/2 inches. I decided to join it to the body at the twelfth fret to save some length, although this may not been completely logical, given the take-apart feature. It is body heavy, but with a strap to works okay. It sounds better today than yesterday...maybe all that plywood and spruce is opening up...  hah.
__________________
Angie
|
