Traveler Guitar EG-1 Vintage Electric Guitar with Gig Bag (Gold)

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $714.99
Sale Price: Price Unavailable
Today's Bonus:

• Full 24 3/4" Scale
• Fits in airline overhead bins.
• Includes on-board headphone amp with clean & distortion settings.
• Features a full-size humbucker.
• Beautiful Satin finish on Mahogany body.

Click Here to Read More Reviews >>

I purchased this guitar as I do a lot of traveling and cheap acoustics purchased in those countries just are no substitute for an electric guitar, which is my preferred form of playing.

In terms of the concept of this guitar, it's very good indeed, and probably the best you'll find. It's small enough to fit in a large hard shell suitcase if the airline your travelling with won't allow it on board, as some do! The neck is very nice, feels nice and is well fretted & the body considering what there is of it is very well made and looks good too. It's also very light indeed. The gig bag is very well made too.

But here's where they (Traveler) let themselves down with what could be a much better guitar, especially considering that this is not a cheap six string to start with.

The tuning keys are rubbish, I've replaced these with Grover mini Rotomatics.

The Bridge is of poor quality, I've replaced this with a Gotoh Nashville Tune-O-Matic Bridge.

I replaced the pickup with a Seymour Duncan 59 humbucker.

The Electronics, the whole in built clean and driven effect with headphone output is a nice idea, but it just sounds awful and tinny, as the 'sound' is being processed through a circuit board and those nasty mini potometers that all guitarists know are a complete 'no-no' in the tone department. To do this I removed all the inners of this guitar and wired the guitar as a 'straight to amp' electric (no headphone out) with quality 500k CTS pots, quality capacitors, good wire and shielded it. There's plenty of room to do this in the cavity of the body.

The nut's almost like rubber, replaced with a TUSQ nut.

The black plastic 'roller' at the tail is complete garbage it mutes the sustain and the strings bite into it adding further to the tuning issues, esp' if you play a lot of heavy lead like SRV, Hendrix, as I do. Also when you take the strings off, it all falls into lots of bits instead of being one complete piece, which would of made much more sense. I've had this 'roller' re-made on a lathe from polished stainless steel.

As for the Headphones and effects I have purchased a Korg Mini Pandora effects unit and a great little Alu' arm that attaches to the body and holds the korg right in front of me.

I now have an amazing guitar, which sounds great evening plugged into my Orange tube amp, and it may look a bit odd but it can certainly hold it's own no problem in a gig.

For sure I have spent a lot of extra cash on doing this, which I feel it's worth it, because no other company builds one like this for you to buy 'over the counter', esp' at this size and weight.

I would not expect Traveler to build them to this spec' as I have took it to...but they charge a lot of cash for one of these and things like a cheap nut, rubbish tuning keys and poor made bridges are just completely unacceptable. Travler have been making these types of electric guitars for quite some time now, so there really is no excuse. To me this is a fantastic design that has been hurried through the production process....maybe the 'Made in China' badge on the heel is a giveaway.

In all, I would recommend this, but only if you're prepared to spend the extra cash to bring it up to scratch, esp' if you're a player who all ready knows what 'Tone' sounds like. If you don't want to do this my advice would be to buy a cheaper model or make as you won't be getting your moneys worth with this one.

All the best.

Buy Traveler Guitar EG-1 Vintage Electric Guitar with Gig Bag (Gold) Now

I decided that i would teach myself guitar, and accordingly got myself a Gretsch 5420T, which is a fantastic guitar, but not very airline mobile. I travel a lot, and very quickly realised that I would make very little progress without the ability to practice daily.

I didn't like the idea of purchasing cheap acoustics, but i did give a lot of thought to getting a Yamaha silent, which is roughly in the same price bracket as the Traveler EG-1, although its a very different concept a silent acoustic that is a little more portable.

Eventually, I settled on the Traveler, purchased through Amazon. It arrived promptly, despite the international delivery, and was well and safely packaged. It comes with a useful soft gig bag and tools. It's a nice little guitar, well made, and with a nice well adjusted action out of the box (nicer than the Gretsch in some ways). Played at night, with the rest of the house asleep its not too noisy just loud enough without headphones to hear the pitch of the note and whether its cleanly struck. Through the built in mini amp and headphones it sounds fine for my needs, I mostly use the clean setting, with the guitar turned off when not played, battery life for the 9vlt is fine. I purchased a set of Sennheiser on ear folding headphones, px-200 which are comfortable for a couple of hours practice without being too tangly. The aux in is a great feature. The 1/4 in output to an amp works with the onboard electrics turned off not sure if its wired as a separate circuit or not. The single humbucker in the bridge position is also good enough for me, for now.

The nut is a well set up, pretty firm compound, no buzzing on the frets at all, and the bridge is well adjusted good intonation at the 12th fret, again both of them are fine for my level of playing, and probably much higher level of players. I would agree with the comments of the tuners stiff and fussy, they are probably the first thing I would change. I also agree with the coments on the black plastic roller sometimes when I tune to pitch, and come back a little later only to find it to be 5c flat possibly the string biting into the black plastic. Having said that when I get it right, the tuning seems to stay stable for a long time, better than I had expected anyway. The suggestion above of ordering a machined stainless steel roller is a very good one though probably a bit dear. I will consider doing it at the first re string, probably with new tuners. It would have been nice for a larger, guitar style selecter for the on board amp, the current switch is small and a little hobby electronics in feel, though it works well enough.

It is very easy to travel with, and comes with a reassuring feeling of solidity. Overall I am very happy with the buy, exactly what I needed and beter than I expected. As in the other review, there are a few things that could be done to make it an even better instrument.