Travel Guitar
Owned a few of these ................................................................from 3/4 scale one piece:
........................................................................................................To full scale compact designs:
......problem is a separate case is needed to carry on plane. Neither of these designs will fit in a carry on case. Even guitars with removeable necks wont fit as they are over 55cm long with headstock.
Headless designs with removeable necks will work, but I am not too keen on body designs which tend to be slabs of wood that are difficult to hold.
The guitar I am looking for needs to be light, with a compact contoured body and headless.
Couldn't find one so decided to chop a Hofner Shorty, which fits the brief......minus headstock.
My inspiration for this mod came from stumbling across this Chinese bridge on Aliexpress:
This bridge looked revolutionary to me having all the saddles & tuning mechanism in one easy to fit inexpensive package! I mounted this bridge onto a 6mm aluminium plate which bolted to the existing bridge supports. Turned out to be exactly the right height.
The following sequence of pictures shows the result of he chop:
Details of neck mounting arrangement with threaded inserts:
Details of headstock:
The bridge tuning pegs are difficult to turn so I devised a tool made from a guitar knob. This is held in the body with a magnet:
More details of the bridge & second pickup I added. The guitar is comfortable to play, sounds great, and fits into a carry on luggage case!
