The Strobel Rambler - a travel guitar that's equally at home on stage

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Most travel guitar are instruments built to a compromise. They are compact and lightweight, and usually this means they are fine for practice or something to bash around on while travelling, but you wouldn't really want to play a gig with one.

Not so the Strobel Rambler, which is a professional quality electric guitar that just so happens to be able to be able to be packed away in a standard-sized briefcase. We first looked at Strobel Guitars back in 2008 when their sole offering, the Rambler Custom, would have been out of the price range of many people wanting a travel guitar. They now also offer the Rambler Classic which takes the same concept but makes it available for $599.

Tommy Castro with his Rambler

Strobel Guitars
Rambler™ Travel Electric Guitar

Want to jam when you get there? Practice in the hotel? Jump on stage and play? Take along a Strobel Rambler™ Travel Electric Guitar - a full scale professional instrument that breaks down to fit in a briefcase or computer bag in minutes. This is a great sounding, great playing instrument perfected for the traveling musician. The Rambler™ offers unsurpassed quality, playability and resonance.

The Rambler™ travel guitar features locking tuners located on the bottom of the guitar with the strings loaded from the top of the neck through the patented StringKeeper™. Dual humbucking pickups are switchable from neck to bridge (or both) to provide a fat full sound and excellent tone. Separate tone and volume controls provide a wide range of equalization. Intonation and string action is set with a fully adjustable Tuneomatic bridge. The adjustable nut (a unique feature of the Rambler™ portable travel guitar), allows adjustment of the string action at the top of the neck.

Weighing in at less than five pounds (and with an assembled length of about 30”), the Rambler™ is a very portable guitar. The Rambler™ Classic comes with a nicely padded embroidered gig bag, fitting nicely in the overhead bin when traveling by air. The neck is 17-1/2” and the body measures just over 15” when disassembled, so they fit in most all computer bags. Scale length is a standard 24-1/2” Gibson scale with 20-21 frets. The nut is 1-5/8” wide and the neck profile is a thin “C” shape.

Travelers typically take the Rambler™ Professional Electric Travel Guitar apart and place the separated neck and body in their carry on luggage. To take the guitar apart, simply loosen the single thumbwheel on the top of the neck and remove the StringKeeper™. Wrap the strings around the body through the StringCatcher™, tucking the StringKeeper™ between the middle tuners. Then take off the neck by loosening the four body thumbwheels. Simply reverse the process to assemble the guitar.

While playing and sounding like a full size electric guitar, the Rambler™ portable guitar has a sonic advantage due to the absence of a headstock. The string energy (normally wasted as the vibrations pass over the nut) is channeled back into the neck, providing superior resonance and sustain. Neck relief is adjustable with the dual action truss rod, allowing more or less relief as desired. The Rambler™ Classic has a solid Maple body, in either Tobacco or Cherry Sunburst. To order a Rambler™, please log on to www.StrobelGuitars.com.

Strobel Guitars also offers the Rambler™ Custom Travel Guitar, with choice of tone woods, neck shape, fretboard, inlay initials and a full line of custom colors. Some of the many custom options include gold hardware, quilted AAA maple tops, coil tapping, on board pre-amp, custom inlay, Piezo bridge, etc. You can also check out the new Rambler Custom Bass Travel Guitar at www.StrobelGuitars.com.

The Rambler™ Classic Travel Electric Guitar
Spec Sheet

• Fits in a computer case for travel
• Easily breaks down without tools
• Removable interchangeable neck
• Full 24 ½” scale length
• 12” fretboard radius
• 20 medium jumbo frets
• Overall length 30”
• Weight between 4 to 5 lbs.
• Double action truss rod
• Adjustable Nut
• Removable StringKeeper™ for fast assembly
• StringCatcher™ to protect finish
• Patented innovative design
• Dual humbucking pick ups
• Volume and tone controls
• Locking tuners
• Tunomatic bridge
• Solid Canadian Maple body
• Tobacco or Cherry Sunburst finish
• Maple neck with Rosewood fretboard
• Mother of Pearl dot inlays
• Expert, proprietary luthier fabrication

Thanks to Russ Strobel for this info.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1980s mirrored Erlewine Lazer travel guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com

This Erlewine Lazer travel guitar - made famous by Johnny Winter - has been modified to become a lefty, hence the knobs moved from the front to what is now the top (but actually with the back cutaway, it's still usable as a righty).  

With its single splitable DiMarzio humbucker, it's the early version of the Lazer - the IMC. The big tuning bridge with its fanned tuners is extremely cool - I'm surprised that it's not more common for headless guitars, because it seems to be a pretty good solution - but one should try it to be sure...

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Fernandes Nomad "Hello Kitty"

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I can't really add this Fernandes Nomad "Hello Kitty" to the "Hideous guitars" tag here on this blog, because - let's face it - it's not aimed at the likes of me. However, it's seems like incredibly lazy marketing. You can imagine the conversation:

"We want to market this guitar to young girls."
"Let's make it pink."
"Yes, good idea. And maybe add a cute cartoon character too."

I mean, c'mon... Am I the only one that finds this "let's make it pink and cutesy" attitude cloyingly sickening? And isn't it a little bit insulting to women? I'm all for "guitars for girls" but much prefer the designs of Luna Guitars who make guitars suited to the female form that are feminine without being nauseating - some of which appeal to male players too.

Yeah, I get that the "Hello Kitty" Nomad is aimed at a younger age group, but in some ways that makes it all the worse... but hey, this is supposed to be a blog about guitars and not gender politics, so I'll leave it at that.

Maybe I'm wrong but I feel that the seller is being a tad optimistic asking a Buy It Now price of $599. This guitar may well be "discontinued" (I wonder why?), "rare" and "mint", but I can't really see anyone but the most rabid Fernandes collector going for this one. Or maybe a "Hello Kitty" collector.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Fender ST-Champ travel Strat with built-in amp

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Although I can imagine one or two readers groaning when they see this blog post, I make no apologies for showing you all yet another Stratocaster. Yes, the Stratocaster does seem to have a certain omnipresence to it, but one of the things I enjoy about it is the sheer number of variations on a theme that we see. Rest assured, I'm not going to blog about a bog-standard Stratocaster - we've all seen those a thousand times and more; if I'm going to blog about a Strat, it's going to be different in some way.

This particular Strat is a Fender Japan ST-Champ and I guess it would be safe to say that it represents Fender's take on the travel guitar. It has a mini-sized body although the neck appears to be full-scale, a single humbucker and an on-board amp. The ST-CHAMP is definitely not to be confused with the 3/4-scale Squier Mini with on-board amp. The difference in quality should be apparent from the photos. Having not seen one of these before, my guess is that this guitar was produced for the Japanese market only. If you know differently, I'm happy to be told otherwise!

Thanks to Keith McCreary who found this guitar on the www.ishibashi.co.jp/eng site.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Eko M33 Short Gun + bonus

guitarz.blogspot.com

I've been willing to show an Eko Short Gun guitar for a while, this is a good opportunity. 

The Eko Short Gun (aka Fuciletto - I like Italian nicknames for guitars - did you know that in Italy the SG is called Diavoletto - little devil?) is a very interesting small guitar, designed to look like the stock of a handgun, compensating the cold minimalism of the Steinberger L models with a sensual curved wooden body...

This M33 is the one pickup model - the M35 having two pickups. The Eko Short Gun is supposed to have had much visibility when used by The Knack on their hit My Sharona, that is of little interest but if you enjoy as much as I do how Frank Zappa inserted a few bars of My Sharona in his 1988 version of Ravel's Bolero, as you can hear here: 

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

I really cannot find a good title for this post

guitarz.blogspot.com

This is a brandless cheap minimal Chinese travel guitar with a bizarre shape - it's supposed to look like a fish but it doesn't... The shape is actually not bad, simple and weird at the same time, a good designer could probably do something interesting out of it... 

I'm more and more interested in a single middle pick-up, I should find a guitar like that to check how it sounds!

bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Hondo Flash headless bass designed by Harry Fleishman

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Hondo guitars don't have the best of reputations. Those that remember their poorly executed copies of Gibson and Fender designs recall them with a shudder and rarely have a good word to say about them. In the early 1980s Hondo brought in luthier Harry Fleishman as a design consultant, and jumping on the minimalistic headless bass bandwagon, together they came up with this, the Hondo Flash Bass.

It has the appearance of being all neck. Indeed, the fretboard sports 30 frets (unless I miscounted) and I think you can safely say that access to the upper frets is unhindered. The volume and tone controls are mounted on the upper edge (reminiscent of the LaBaye 2x4) and the Hondo/Fleishman team have come up with quite an elegant solution to the problem of where to locate the tuners. The bass has a single J-style pickup and allegedly a piezo pickup system too.

The seller keeps referring to it as a "travel guitar", but you'll see in the photo of it next to a Jazz-esque Bass that it's about the same length. The length subtracted from the head has simply been added behind the bridge. However, if you're talking body mass, then yes, it's a lot smaller but it's still going to have to fit inside a lengthy case or gig bag.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Silver Street Taxi

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Silver Street Guitars were small American manufacturer from the mid 1980s. The model pictured here is the small-bodied Silver Street Taxi. The Taxi would appear to be a cut-down version of the larger triangular-bodied Cobra guitar from the same manufacturer. Another model was co-designed by Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw.

For more information on these guitars and lots more photographs please refer to www.silverstreetguitars.com

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!

Can anybody identify this guitar?

guitarz.blogspot.com

I found this guitar on a German-Swiss site and it might be called a Dulci but I can't find anything more about it... I'm not even sure if it's really a guitar - is it a travel acoustic one, a 6-string ergonomic ukulele or some hybrid I've never heard of until now?

So just for the sake of my curiosity, I call for the expertise of the innumerable guitar lovers who read this blog...

bertram

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!

Mike Oldfield's travel guitar up for grabs

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've seen one of Mike Oldfield's guitars up for auction previously on Guitarz. On that occasion it was his ex-Marc Bolan Telecaster which was the main lead guitar used on his now legendary Tubular Bells album.

This time, it's a one-off travel guitar with integral amp and speaker which was presented to Oldfield by the German arm of his record company, Virgin. The guitar appears to be modelled along the lines of a Hofner Shorty (possibly it is a customized Hofner Shorty) and bears Oldfield's name on the pickguard and has a Tubular Bells logo on the trussrod cover.

I remember seeing Mike Oldfield demonstrate this very guitar on a Breakfast TV show back in 1983 (or thereabouts) during an item in which he was showing off part of his guitar collection. I've tried and cannot find this clip on YouTube. I believe he mentioned taking it with him on aircraft flights. I couldn't say if it was ever used on any of his records; I suspect that it was purely a practice guitar.

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!

March Guitars J-Walker

Originally designed as a travel guitar, the J-Walker from March Guitars of Montréal is a high-class compact guitar that can hold its own against the best guitars on the market in terms of sound and sustain. With a 24 3/4 inch scale, it has a headless design set-neck on a compact mahogany body with a choice of lacewood, curly or birds eye maple top. The guitar is equipped with two Seymour Duncan humbuckers with volume and tone controls, each with push/pull function to select single-coil mode and coil tap, making for a versatile instrument in a small package.

My guitars...

The collection has changed a lot since I last featured an item on my own guitars on this blog. Here is the collection as it currently stands after having sold a few guitars recently (warning BIG pictures):

Fender Japan Blue Flower 70s style Strat circa 1988. Bought approx over one year ago - it had one lady owner previously who had played it once then put it away in its case for years, so it's in mint condition. Not to be confused with the more recent inferior re-issues.

Fender Japan candy apple red 12-string Strat

Feline Holy Panther - built by Feline guitars of Croydon using an original 1970s Fender body. Inspired by Russ Ballard's guitar.

DiMarzio one-off "Red Beauty" built for 1984 NAMM trade show. Read more here.

Sanox Sound Creator plexiglass bodied Strat-type guitar. Made in Japan in the 1970s.

Fernandes Pink Plexiglass Sustainer Guitar. Totally unique. One-off guitar made for the trade shows. VERY heavy. Has far more sustain than other Fernandes guitars I have played.

Ovation Celebrity acoustic. I can't remember the model number off the top of my head. Names are always much easier to remember. Nice sound and the built-in tuner is a god-send, but the action's a little high for my tastes.

Ovation Breadwinner - circa 1976. A true classic - the first truly ergonomically designed guitar - first production guitar with active electronics and 24-fret neck. Note glossy black finish and small scratchplate.

Gibson Flying V Faded Cherry, circa 2004.

Mania Fretless Bass. Bought to replace my Mexican-made Fender Jazz Bass fretless which I never got on with. Thru-neck, lovely woods, lovely sounds... (with roundwound strings, btw. I know a lot of people put flatwounds on a fretless because they are scared of marking the fingerboard but they sound like crap. Use roundwounds and the bass literally sings.)

Short-scale EB0-bass, probably Japanese, early 70s. No, it wasn't me who painted and decorated it. Cheesy-looking but nice sound - particularly from neck pickup.

Kay K45 Travel Guitar. Thru-neck construction, DiMarzio designed pickups, brass hardware. Circa 1980s.

Traveler Pro Series travel guitar. Features magnetic single-coil pickup, piezo pickup under bridge for acoustic sound, plus "stethophones" which pick up sound from internal diaphram under bridge which lets you privately practice totally acoustically. Made in USA.

Yup! It's only got 4 strings. (No - it's NOT a bass). It's a tenor guitar. Very limited edition in Telecaster styling from Soares'y Guitars.

Guitbass. Three-stringed guitar as used by The Presidents of the United States of America. I built this from parts from an old Japanese Strat copy, Epiphone humbucker, plus various other bits and pieces that I had in my box of bits. The three strings are tuned C#, G# and C# (octave higher than the low C#). Looks like sh*t but sounds great.

Yamaha EZ-EG. Not really a guitar at all, but a guitar-shaped synth-controller. Has on-board sounds and can connect to other synths via MIDI. The right-hand has picking "strings" and the left hand has buttons laid out for each of the strings at 12 fret positions, so you can indeed play it like a guitar.

Countryman 6-string banjo. Banjo players would call it a guitar and guitar players would call it a banjo! It's a banjo, but with six strings so that a guitarist can use regular guitar tuning and get a banjo sound. Very loud.

My ukuleles. Greg Bennett baritone ukulele on the left and Mahalo soprano on the right. The soprano is a bit small for my large fingers, but I love playing the baritone.

Yamaha Pacifica. Bought in pieces, refinished and re-assembled my me. The striped "deckchair" look was an experiment with three different colour oil finishes and some tape! It's far from perfect but I quite like it. There is no tone control because I prefer it that way. (OK, truth be told, it fell off when I was removing the electrics from one broken pickguard to a second pickguard, and I couldn't be arsed re-soldering it on, but as I never use passive tone controls anyway this was no big deal). This guitar is actually a really nice player. It intones well and has a nice action. Perhaps it would benefit from some hotter pickups but they would cost me way more than the rest of the guitar. This is the guitar that I keep at my parents' house in Wales and which largely makes the travel guitars redundant. I also have the body and neck of another Pacifica which needs re-building. (An unfinished project - or perhaps that should say an unstarted project?)

Other guitars that I have owned and sold on include:

Vox Standard 25
Vox Clubman II guitar (later converted to fretless)
Westone Thunder I-A fretless bass
Eko Ranger XII 12-string acoustic
Eko mando-guitar
Aria Elecord FET-DLX electro-acoustic
Aria Legend Plexiglass Jazzmaster
Fender Japan Stratocaster pink paisley (circa 1988)
Fender Japan Telecaster pink paisley (early 1980s)
Fender Japan Stratocaster Antigua re-issue
Squier Stagemaster 7-string
Fernandes Revolver Pro with Sustainer
Fernandes Native Pro with Sustainer
Bass built with parts from Brandoni guitars
Sakai EB0-style shortscale bass
Avon EB0-style shortscale bass
Fender Jazz Bass Fretless (Made in Mexico)
Two or three Strat-a-likes self-built from spare parts
Top 20 (Woolworths) guitar complete with vibrato arm
Cheap but nice Telecaster copy
Tele-style guitar self-built from spare parts
Silvertone (Harmony?) Archtop acoustic
Unidentifiable Archtop acoustic
Washburn Idol WI64
Epiphone Les Paul Junior
Teisco MJ2
Danelectro Convertible
Danelectro 56'U2
Danelectro 12+6 doubleneck

...plus a couple of other cheapies that I didn't keep for very long.

Kay K45 travel guitar

This Kay-branded travel guitar, the K45 is currently for sale on eBay, and looks to be a pretty clean example. In the USA this guitar was known as the Austin Hatchet. Built in the early 80s, this guitar features a laminated through-neck construction, and has nut, bridge and fingerboard dot inlays all made of brass. The humbucking pickups are "DiMarzio designed" and the controls include a coil tap. The strap is integral to the design and doubles as a carrying strap when the guitar is cased up.

I own one of these guitars, although mine appears to have been very well used (and abused) over the years (not by me, I hasten to add - it was an eBay purchase last year). It also lacks the case. The construction is incredibly solid; the neck is like a baseball bat with a deep V shape in section. However, it needs some work doing to it. The electrics aren't great and it needs a good set-up. One of these days I'm going to get around to sorting it out properly.

Diminuitive homemade acoustic guitar

As I write this, this small handmade acoustic has just 3 and a half hours before its auction finishes on eBay, and bidding is currently at £15.

The seller rather curiously descibes it as a "Handmade Lapsteel Guitar". I can't see why he thinks it might be a lapsteel guitar as it has a round-backed neck and it has FRETS. Perhaps, he's an estate agent and used to trying to turn negatives into positives, so that when he says it's a lapsteel what he really means is that the action is horrendously high. (He does mention that the bridge has lifted).

It also appears to be strung left-handed.

It's a pity the photos aren't better, as it looks to be quite nicely made, despite the dodgy bridge.

Edit: Sold for just £15. Someone got a bargain. Perhaps.

A rustic travel guitar

Brad Fisher of Williamsburg, VA has designed his own acoustic travel guitar, the prototype being up for sale on eBay right now. Looking something like a boat paddle, this guitar's body seems proportionally bigger and hopefully more resonant than that sported by some travel guitars, e.g. the minimalist Martin Backpacker, but its shorter than usual scale length requires a higher tuning. (Unfortuantely he doesn't give us the scale length or tell us what tuning he's used. I wonder if it could use standard tuning if strung with heavier gauge strings?)

The seller tells us that "...the tuners are in the back of the body instead of the head, that way you could stick the neck end in a back-pack or bag without messing up the tuning." I'm not quite sure why this is an advantage, because surely by chucking it in a backpack you could just as easily mess up the tuning at the other end instead? Or is that end supposed to be sticking out of your backback? Also, it wouldn't be a guitar for standing upright as you wouldn't want to stand it on the tuners.

Blackbird Rider Nylon Carbon Fibre Guitar

Those who read my report of the London Guitar Show 2008 may remember my enthusiasm for an all-graphite acoustic guitar from the Rainsong brand.

Another company building carbon fibre guitars are Blackbird Guitars who launched the Rider Steel String guitar last year. Sporting a radical design, its small size, resistance to humidty and almost indestructability make it a perfect although not inexpensive choice as a travel guitar. It should be pretty lightweight too.

Now blackbird have announced its nylon-strung counterpart, the Blackbird Rider Nylon. It's a similar design although the body appears somewhat fatter and squatter that the Rider Steel. Just like the steel string, the Rider Nylon has a hollow neck and an additional soundhole in the headstock. I've not heard this in action but in theory it sounds like a brilliant idea. Having played that other carbon fibre guitar I can imagine that the Blackbird would be extremely resonant.

It's a lovely piece of design, but I think it's out of my price range.

Strobel Guitars - The Guitar That Fits In A Briefcase

Strobel Guitars offer high-quality full-scale length travel guitars. The small body and detachable headless neck allow the whole guitar to fit neatly into a briefcase with plenty of room to spare for files and accessories. They claim to be the only guitar "you can take in your briefcase", so obviously are unaware of the Stowaway guitar from Stewart Guitars.

Guitare de Voyage

You know how I love featuring weird guitar designs on this blog. Here's a very strange-looking electro-acoustic travel guitar being offered from a seller in Canada. Unfortunately, the seller doesn't supply very much information so the photo is all we have to go on.

Celeb Ukes

Some enterprising soul has been customising cheap ukuleles and travel guitars using the medium of stencils and spray paint and selling them on eBay. Very cunning, I thought, although I'd have preferred to see the stencilling on front of the instrument. I suppose you'd have to have a image that fits around the bridge and soundhole.

Killer Pegasus guitar

I'm not quite sure why this horrible looking white thing should be named after a fantastic flying horse from Greek mythology, but apparently this Killer Pegasus mini guitar is a rare discontinued model. I wonder why they discontinued it. I mean, everyone must have been clamouring to get themselves one of these, surely?

By the way, it's actually only got a single pickup. What appears to be the front "pickup" is not a pickup - it's a mini speaker set into a pickup surround, so presumably there's a small on-board amp too. As if this thing was not ugly enough to start with, they're trying to encourage you to take this thing out and about! I'm of the opinion that it's one for locking up in a darkened room.

The seller says it is a "Perfect gift for your kids, girlfriend or wife!", so reading between the lines this is not a guitar for real men. Women and children only, eh? Well, if I was on a sinking ship with this I'd quite happily bung it overboard to make room in the lifeboat.