2019 NK Headless

Details

While traveling to Aruba for a vacation, I ended up chatting with another tourist playing a travel guitar and amp by the hotel pool. He was using a Steinberger and a Boss Katana amp with headphones and it really put an idea in my head - at the time, I was traveling 50-75% of the time for my job and it made it very hard to practice and jam. In the airport on the layover coming back from Aruba, my gracious girlfriend and I looked around the web for various options and after looking at these style guitars on eBay and reading reviews, she bought me one for my birthday.

These guitars are chinese made copies available on ebay for a few hundred bucks, similar in shape and style to Strandberg instruments but lower quality. It took several weeks to arrive, but I’m surprised by the quality. I’m sure it doesn’t hold a candle to Strandberg, but for 1/5 the price, it’s hard to argue with for what I will use only as a practice instrument. It came with a nice soft case that really looks like a tennis racket case, active pickups, and fanned frets. The bridge has a locking mechanism that I’ve been too afraid to release - even though there is a whammy bar I’d be really afraid to use it but maybe I’m just being too careful. The wooden knobs are also a strange choice, and the selector switch is very low quality plastic. The pickups sound pretty good though, although I have some hesitations about active pickups on a travel guitar - I’d rather have as few batteries as possible. My first flight with it was a success - I placed it in the overhead bin on top of some backpacks and just kept a close eye on it during the boarding process to make sure no one placed a big suitcase on top of it. Once I got my hands on the Yamaha THR-10 amp, I really had the perfect practice setup - the amp of course goes in my checked baggage. For its purpose, it’s quite suitable. Luckily, I don’t travel much for work anymore so it lives at my office now, just in case I have a few minutes to play there.