Hi, @tracyshannon ! Welcome to the community. As always there are a lot of good thoughts in the replies. There are also lots of old threads about left hand wrist pain and how to hold your guitar.
Personally, I like the classical position with the guitar body between the legs and the neck up so the head is almost to your ear. I do this even with electrics. But everyone is different or chooses differently. I need a guitar support (although a strap would work too) and a low chair, so there are limitations. What I gain is a more relaxed hand and shoulder positions of both arms.
I would recommend moving your guitar around however you need to to find where it needs to be such that you aren’t over bending your left wrist and you are otherwise comfortable, make sure the guitar is not tilted towards you more than a tiny amount, and then find a way to hold it there if needed.
Some simple changes are (if you support the guitar in the right thigh) to allow the head to be out almost to the left knee, rather than pulling it in close. Also, allowing the neck to tilt up a bit.
Tilting the guitar up so you can see the fretboard is tempting and I thinks we all want to do this, but the further tilted up it is, the harder the reach for the left fingers and the more you have to wrap around awkwardly with the left wrist. Strumming is harder too. That said, there are some famous historic classical guitarists who played with the guitar quite far from perpendicular to the floor, so it can be done, I think it risks joint injury for most of us, however.
I haven’t really traveled with a guitar beyond locally where I could throw a full sized guitar in the car. Even that is a hassle. Part of it is that I travel with my family, so the opportunities to practice really don’t happen. So it does depend on a realistic assessment of what you will be able to do. You travel a lot and it seems like for work, so I imagine it might be worth it. If you always go to the same place, maybe buy and leave an inexpensive guitar there. If you need to carry with, there are lots of options for small and pretty decent electric quieter guitars that are pretty small. I had the donner hush for a while but it doesn’t lend itself to the classical posture and I am no longer used to such thin electric necks/nuts. It packs super well though. That or something similar would be great. A practice guitar stick is useless, though. Get something you can play and, at least with headphones, hear.
Perfect, thank you for the link! I searched around on the web and a few websites like Sweetwater and watched videos. Sadly, I had no idea that they would be pricy. I wish I had thought of this before buying the guitar I have now! Looks like I’ll need to save up a bit and purchase one in the future.
Tracy, have you looked into renting a guitar at your travel destinations?
Here in Canada, our main music chain, Long and McQuade, offers very reasonable weekly and monthly rental rates. And you don’t have to worry about the airline, smashing your guitar!!
Excellent idea and no, I haven’t thought of it but it’s an intriguing idea. In April, I’ll be in Ireland for 3 weeks- moving from place to place and ending up on the opposite site of the Country from where I start. In May however, I’ll be in Scotland with a home base for a month so that may be an option. The next two months are various Countries an Locations. I’m a Wanderlust so…I never know for sure where my heart will take me. That is another reason even a traveling guitar can be a challenge. The small jet’s for my “hopper” flights have very limited allowances or even room. I’m finding that for the past 2 years flights are jammed tight
I have a couple of inexpensive suggestions, they’re all reasonably priced and would work for practice, you might need to learn to do a bit of minor setting up with them (YouTube videos are available) but just for keeping your hand in they would probably be OK without having anything done.
I think that the advantage of going this way is that it’s a one off buy, hiring isn’t and over time could get quite expensive, also there would be no need to find a shop who hires guitars in the area you’re going.
