Hello, everyone. First time logged in here…pretty cool. I’m heading out for a month long road trip this spring and want to keep practice/playing current but don’t want to carry my Strat if I don’t have to. Has anyone used a pocket guitar trainer, and if so are they any good? I’m not sold on the reviews. Any suggestions for travel guitar trainers? Thanks, all
Welcome to the community John.
There are all kinds of small travel guitars that would be way better that some gimmicky device.
It would depend on your budget on what king of travel guitar to get.
Welcome @Jby51
I have tried a “Jamstick”. It is terrible. Don’t get one. It may work ok as a midi device but not for practice.
My guess is all the other real cheap practice sticks also are so different from a real guitar and cheap as to be worthless.
How handy are you? You could find a $30 used strat or similar in a thrift store and saw it down. Who needs electronics for practice.
You could loosen and wrap the strings, unscrew the neck and fold it up. As long as you don’t need to do that often, it may be fine. (Full disclosure, I have not tried this).
Or buy one, easiest, but most expensive.
I just got the Traveler Escape 3 acoustic model two weeks ago. I bought it to keep in my office to play during lunch. I have not missed a day of practice since. This one has the built in headphone amp. They are not cheap, but the quality and sound is great, and I am getting more time on the guitar.
I have, I tried it out first on an old junk shop guitar but it was so good I used it on the guitar I wanted to travel with. I did it like this, I also ran some cyano around the sides of the insert:
That is super smart!
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I travel a fair bit, on occasions, and am due to travel again soon.
What I have tended to do, and I may do again this time, is to go and buy a cheap guitar from a local shop, and then sell it on before you go (or, in one case, I donated it to a friend’s daughter).
I’m also tempted with one of the Traveler guitars which would probably be handy if I was doing a lot of shorter trips (which I may be doing).
Once, I took my Fender Tele with me for a few months. I took off the strings and the neck, and put the neck and body in my suitcase along with a spare set of strings and some tools. it worked well, but it did use up a lot of space in my suitcase and I probably wouldn’t do it again.
I have a Jammy Guitar which is a similar device to the Jamstick that @Jamolay mentioned. It’s a toy and I wouldn’t even consider taking it to practice on.
Frankly, anything other than a real, playable guitar of some sort is a gimmick and a waste of time and money.
Even buying a $50 piece of junk electric guitar from a pawn shop and then selling it back or throwing it in the nearest skip when you leave is probably more useful than any of these other gimmicky “trainers”.
What you may want to consider, as a useful travel too, is a headphone amp. There’s a few decent ones around, but I have the Boss Pocket GT and will be taking that with me on my next trip, along with a cable, to plug into whatever I end up getting.
Cheers,
Keith
An acoustic travel guitar may or may not suit you but I ended up getting a Yamaha apxt2 3/4 acoustic which now goes on the parcel shelf or in the boot of the car whenever I go anywhere. I’d normally play an electric at home so find it a good excuse for me to try something different and keep practicing / playing.