Guitars are already pretty portable instruments. You just throw one in a gig bag and you’re all set. But those long necks can suffer much more than a ding on long journeys, particularly if air travel is involved. So for players who want to keep strumming when on a trip, various travel guitar designs have emerged. Manufacturers of smaller travel guitars are starting to add more useful features into a more compact, modern design. Traveling with them enables many people of the options to carry other important things and reduce costs. The latest is a premium design from Ciari Guitars that features a fold-over neck and hides a novel locking mechanism inside the body.
That neck is jointed in two places, has two translating truss rods and works with a floating bridge to allow it to fold back behind the body. A string management system ensures the strings don’t flop all over the shop. In travel mode, the guitar will fit into “a standard backpack” and should be good for airline carry-on.
When it comes time to rock, the neck is unfolded and a lever hidden from view in a recess on the lower part of the body is pulled from front to back. This pushes the trussrods up through the neck to lock it in playing position and brings the strings to tension. You can see the mechanism in action below.
Elsewhere, the single cut Ascender features an ebony 22 fret fingerboard, Gotoh locking tuners and Seymour Duncan humbucking pickups.
Originally demonstrated at the NAMM show in January, 2019, the guitar is now set to make its production debut at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville later this month. The exact ticket price has yet to be determined, but Ciari estimates that it will be in the region of US$3,000.
Novel travel guitar folds down to backpack size for transport [New Atlas]