Discovered one called the Vagabond and another called the Outbound at the following site:
www.guitardigest.com/art/5.html

Anyone out there have hands on knowlege of these instruments? Or any others that will meet the citeria. Which are: full scale length, tone, playability, portability, durability.

Tom Barth is a great guy. Here's his web site http://www.tommyhawk.com/

Scale length is distance from nut to bridge. Or twice the distance from nut to fret XII, same thing. Say +/- 25" for most full size and OO guitars. Maybe thirty some inches for a bass.

The short scale mini guitars end up having tuning and intonation problems in standard tuning, and various schemes are used to try and remedy that. With limited success, at least in my humble opinion. Others may have some different input.

I would prefer a full scale length travel guitar, to be as interchangeable as possible with a full size instrument. If you're ok with the little one being its own thing, you have more to choose from.

It's small enough to carry on (mine is in a Martin backpacker gig bag) and they have the amp built right in the body. And they are really really loud and have a great wicked distortion when you turn them up.

You can plug headphones in and play just to yourself, but half the fun is annoying the poor sucker in the next hotel room with "Spoonful" at high volume.

And they're great for electric slide guitar. You can get an almost David Lindley tone, especially at high volume.

The Traveler is designed by an airline pilot who plays, I believe, and has been privately manufactured by Fender. I've played it on planes without disturbing anyone and used it sucessfully at open mic situations while on the road for business. It has also traveled well to Europe and South America with others as carry on baggage.

My requirements were the same as yours I think. This guitar has a full scale strat neck and is very small and light (3.5lb and 28" long). It uses a cleverly designed acoustic sound chamber for unplugged playing. Looks a bit like a Steinberger and that's what makes it so small. It plays well and sounds good unplugged (although not much projection) as well as plugged in (has a single coil pickup) playing fingerstyle, flatpick, or slide. Packaged for travel and comes with a handy canvas carrying case that has an outside pocket for strings, capos, cigarette amp, ect. About $200 as I recall.

Check it out at www.travelerguitar.com. I've seen them at 48th Street Guitar in NYC.

I liked the Traveler Guitar that Cham talked about, however the price is $499.00. What do you use for an amplifier when you're on the road?

Sorry for not responding sooner about Fine Resophonics. The following link will take you to their 1/2 size single-cone custom model, which lists for FF18,000, or about $2,500: http://www.chez.com/resophonic/custom3m.htm

I'm sure they can do anything, though; like a travel-size tricone, 12-string, etc...

Take care.

Thanks for the link to that 1/2 size reso. A beauty, looks kinda 'National'. Wonder how it plays, anyone had their hands on one?

I keep one of those Smokey Amplifiers in the pocket of the guitar's canvas travel case, along with a cable, the stethoscope earpiece (for acoustic listening, see website), a thin tuner, an extra set of strings, a slide, and some picks. The amp is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and some of them are actually decorated up to look like a pack of cigarettes. It's great to be able to carry all my guitar stuff in the guitar's case, always ready to go.

The amp has a very nice, analog sounding overdriven tone. I ran through it into a PA at an open mic in CA last Spring while playing some slide a la Chris Whitley. A lot of people came up to me afterward asking how I got the sound. It was about $18 at 48th Street.

I have also used one of those mini Marshall stacks for clean playing. However, it doesn't fit into the carrying case. Sounds pretty good to me for $25.

Bill, thanks for the link to guitarnotes.com. Great resource of guitar gear website links! Smokey Amplifiers is linked there but there seemed to be a problem with their site when I checked it out.

Fernandez also makes something like the Pignose, with built in amp and speaker. It feels pretty good, but the sound is not impressive. Sales guy claims it sounds great plugged in. May be worth a try.

If you're going electric, you got to haul an amp. Can't imagine some tiny box will do the job, anything less than an 8" speaker seems inadequate. There's the good ol' Pignose portable. And Crate (Taxi?) makes a battery powered unit too. Anyone played with that?

seatoskyinstruments.com

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Cheers,
Rory