“Your ultimate companion for musical adventures on the go”: Meet the Guild Traveler, a solid mahogany travel acoustic that costs under $250 – and can fit in a plane’s overhead compartment
The new small body acoustic looks like it’s making a serious play to be the best value travel guitar on the market
(Image credit: Guild)
The travel guitar market seems to be expanding as quickly as the guitars are shrinking, but Guild’s new offering – the name-it-as-you-see-it Traveler acoustic guitar – looks like it’s about to offer some serious competition.
It’s all-mahogany construction with a rosewood fingerboard and bridge (plus a gig bag) that comes in at just under $250 – which might well make it the best value travel guitar we’ve seen.
However, Guild has headed down a more traditional – and, we suspect, appealing – route for its journeyman acoustic.
A guitar “made for those who live life on the move”, it sports a mahogany body and neck for “rich, warm” tones, a rosewood fingerboard, a compact body with an open-pore natural satin finish, and an easy-to-play short scale length.
The Traveler has a 22-3/8" scale length and a provided image reveals that it should sit just below the nut of a standard-sized acoustic. It uses its D-55 Natural for comparison, which comprises a 25-5/8" scale length.
The open-pore finish meanwhile bolsters the guitar’s resonance. Guild is also talking up its “innovative archback design” that puts comfort front and center, and the Traveller’s sleek aesthetics, including an all-black headstock design and black bridge.
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(Image credit: Guild)
Two important travel-conscious plus points go to it coming with a deluxe gigbag, and that it “easily fits into an overhead bin on an airplane”.
“The Guild Traveler is your ultimate companion for musical adventures on the go,” says the luthier. “Whether strumming your favorite tunes from a mountaintop, serenading friends by the campfire, it’s the perfect go-everywhere guitar.”
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(Image credit: Guild)
(Image credit: Guild )
Guild Guitars have been part of the Cordoba Music Group since 2014 after Fender sold the firm.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.