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Martin Guitars GBPK
by Caveat-Emptor My Review Of The Martin Back Packer Travel Guitar ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The teeny meanie! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around a decade or so tiny little guitars started appearing on the market. Known as travel guitars they were tiny body instruments of something like 3/4 scale length ... that look like children's toys. They were in fact designed for adults. But not just any adult; these adults were prone to moving about -lol! The concept behind travel guitars is that you can have a tiny instrument that you can easily take about with you on holiday or to work etc so you can play it any time you have a free moment. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Travel guitars can easily be spotted (but are never striped) because; ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ...they look small and silly... ...they all come with cute little tiny guitar bags that you can slip over your shoulder to leave your hands free for important stuff like eating ice cream or doing the hand movements from the Saturday Night Fever dance (white suit is optional)... ...they often have an adult attached to them (often playing a free form jazz variation of Wonderwall or Stairway To Heaven, punctuated with intermittent stops and and cries of 'no wait I can do this' or 'let me start again from the beginning'). ... though they look like toys they're surprisingly expensive instruments... ... and the final clue to identifying a travel guitar; they almost without exception sound really weedy and crap. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A better class of hopeless? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But there are degrees of erm... crapness (is that a technical term :-) and after all no-one in their right minds buys a travel guitar for the sound... Martin make probably the best known (and one of the most expensive) travel guitars; in fact they make a range of them... Martin Backpacker Guitars (that's BPK for short apparently!!) come in Nylon Strung, Steel Strung and with or without pick up variations (presumably so you can amplify the weedy sound to the point where many other people can hear what an awful sounding instrument you have perhaps???). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If they're so naff how come you know so much about them??? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Oh dear, I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that question!! OK you've got me, I admit it I do own a travel guitar but we'll come back to that later. First I want to explain (excuse??? lol!) why I bought one. I have a little home studio, and when I'm working away at the mixing desk I sometimes like to test out little musical ideas before I record them; guitar parts, or working out vocal harmonies etc. Like everyone else with a home studio; I have a piano keyboard. Keyboards however are not my favourite instrument, not by a million miles... Have you ever seen that Clint Eatwood film (I think it was called Firefox) where he steals a secret Soviet experimental fighter jet (I'm going somewhere with this; honest!) that he controls with his thoughts, but the only snag is that to fly the jet poor old Clint has to think in Russian? Well when I write music I think in 'guitar'... A piano keyboard to me is like knowing a second language; you can use it but you can't truly express yourself. But finding a guitar that I could quickly, comfortably pick up and put down while seated in front of my mixing desk - a guitar that wouldn't bang into anything or get in the way... that was a tall order that demanded a short and tiny solution... Yes (gulp); what I needed was a travel guitar! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My short-list of short guitars! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once I was convinced that only a cute little travel guitar was the best solution for me, I got stuck into testing them and narrowing down (much like a travel guitar's body size ;-) the field to short-list the best ones. Fortunately for me I was ideally placed to test out most of the travel guitars available because at the time I was working in a guitar shop - you can't be much better placed than that! Most of the travel guitars I tried were small enough but some I discounted because they sounded so bad that I couldn't live with the noise (or lack thereof) they made.... I finally narrowed it down to two instruments. A Crafter travel guitar and a Martin Backpacker. ~~~~~~~~~~ The Mini Martin! ~~~~~~~~~~ Martin seldom do things by halves. They make some of the worlds finest acoustic guitars and even though they didn't stand a hope in hell of making a tiny bodied travel guitar sound great, they had a really good go at making one that sounded decent. The 'top' (the wood under the strings that has the sound hole in it -and is most responsible for the tone and volume of the guitar) is made of solid spruce. Solid top guitars are always more expensive than, and usually better sounding than laminated tops so no compromise there. The body shape is an original Martin design and looks like someone took one of their dreadnought acoustics and then chopped away all the body except for a thin sliver in the middle. The body shape is very small and easy to manoeuvre but still very comfortable to play on considering there isn't much of it. The bracing is another Martin original design, which isn't too surprising given the weird body shape. It is interesting to note that non of the travel guitars (including the Martin Backpacker) could cope with Light (.12's) or Medium (.013's) gauges of strings. They all recommended nothing heavier than Extra Light's (10's). This is a shame because if the travel guitars had been more sturdily braced so as to accommodate thicker strings (and their increased tension) the travel guitars would have had a bit more (for the want of a better word -lol!) body!! The Martin shipped with a set of Martin bronze 10's strings on it. The machine heads (tuners) were small little chrome ones that worked smoothly and had a good solid feel about them. The Backpacker in general seemed very well made -which I'd expect from Martin anyway especially since it's not a cheap guitar considering its intended market (it was a few years ago that I was searching for my travel guitar -but currently the Backpacker can be picked up for £230 or thereabouts without a pick-up). The sound of the Martin Backpacker wasn't horrible; that 's a compliment for a travel guitar. -but neither was the sound inspiring. The Martin's top end sounded good but there was no depth to the tone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Crafty Competition! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only other travel guitar I was interested in was a Crafter TRV 23. Like the Martin it too had a solid spruce top and small chrome machine heads. The TRV 23 also had a slightly more cumbersome body than the Martin because it was simply a scaled down 3/4 size normal acoustic body shape. The Crafter also had a cutaway on the treble side of the body (a weird and arguably pointless feature on a guitar without a pick-up) but the guitar also had some lovely features like inlays around the sound hole, smart white binding on the body, a nicely decorated headstock and my favourite feature; a very slightly bowled (wooden) back to better project the sound. The Martin guitar had no embellishments to the finish, not that that is particularly important (don't you just love sentences with 'that' in twice?), but it couldn't compete with the volume and tone produced by the Crafter's more traditional shaped (though much smaller than normal) body. Crafter had obviously spent some time looking into the weaknesses of a travel guitar's and then done their best to counter the effects as much as they could. Amazingly they did a lot better job of it than Martin! Talk about David and Goliath!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ King Of The Weeds! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was clear to me that both the Martin and the Crafter would be suitable for what I wanted. The Martin with it's slender body would be the easiest guitar to pick up and put down quickly... but the Crafter was still small enough for me to use and sounded much better.... I bought the Crafter (for about £150 if memory serves me right -it was significantly cheaper than the Martin; of that I'm certain). I don't regret my choice; the Crafter was by a long way the superior sounding instrument, but if I win £200 or so on the lottery I would still love to have a little Martin Backpacker to take about with me on my travels too...it's such a cute little instrument -despite sounding as weak as a politicians promises. I can say with confidence that the Martin Backpacker was the second best travel guitar I ever played... Now if they can only invent the travel grand piano -lol! Thank you so much for reading my review and I hope you found it interesting and useful. Kind regards, Caveat-Emptor x Read the complete review |
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Crafter DE-30
by emmacam cO it really is such a nice guitar. I bought this beautiful model for £199 for my brother about 4 years ago or so. I play guitar and obviously before I bought I had to have a play with it to check I thought it was appropriate to give as a present. When I was looking around at guitars of around the £200 price mark I ... saw this one and remembered playing a smaller version of a crafter a while back and really liking the sound quality. So I asked to see it and play it. It is a large folk guitar which metal strings and the sound immediately caught my attention. The size strings were not that thick although there was a real deep sound which resonated round my ear drums. The wood it is made out of is really smooth, soft and lovely and does not have a metallic clang that most acoustics seem to have. The neck is a perfect size as it is quite thin, which is ideal for the stretches but without being overtly thin and having trouble with close noted chords. I am actually very jealous because the guitar is so lovely and I can not believe how cheap it is for the quality. The guitar has kept nicely for the past few years and I have played it regularly and have been extremely content about the model. It is nice because it can for a beginner or for an advanced payer. If you are really trying to spot the differences between a really expensive guitar and this one you will notice some things. Mainly in the way the strings are kept but unless you are one who notices everything be prepared for a great play! Read the complete review |
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Fender Squier SA100 Acoustic Guitar
by Spellbinder4 Bought myself an acoustic guitar. I was always an incompetent bass player, though I looked good in front of the mirror - I had all the gear but never practiced, so what else could I expect. After years of my bass and amplifier languishing in a cupboard I sold it all. With the money I decided to get a cheap acoustic guitar, ... really just to keep my 'hand in' and maybe learn the guitar a bit just as I always wanted, it'd be nice to strum a few chords. I'd always found in the past that the guitar and those terrifying chord things were way beyond me. So after getting lots of money for my bass, which had now become a collectors item, I could easily afford a little guitar to put in the cupboard instead. So the (Fender) Squier acoustic came my way. It looks the part, it's well put together, nothing on it looks cheap and it comes with a teach yourself book, strap, picks, tuning pipes and a soft cover. So I set about having a go of it, of course, I'm rubbish but this time I was determined to be able to knock out a few Woody Guthrie numbers eventually. To my surprise I found myself practising daily, and here I am three years later and a reasonably accomplished guitarist. I only wanted to know three or four chords but to my constant amazement I moved on to bar chords, jazz, blues scales, pentatonic this and pentatonic that, modal scales, country picking style - all stuff I never thought was in me. But practice really does make perfect that's all there is to it. And I can read music reasonably well. And I started with the little book that came with this guitar. Three years on and the guitar still looks like brand new, great quality varnish, untarnished metalware and it stays in tune. Now I know a bit about guitars I can honestly say it has a perfectly good sound, not the best in the world, but way, way above it's price. I plan and dream of the dozens of guitars I'm going to own one day. And this Squier will be sitting right among them. Read the complete review |
Acoustic Guitar Guitar / Bass Guitar |
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