TIM JOYCE: Hi. I’m Tim Joyce and we’re at the Old Town School of Folk Music in the music store, and today we’re going to talk about travel guitars because summer’s here.

A lot of people during the summer end up taking their guitars on vacations with them, and a lot of people are hesitant to take their super high-end expensive acoustic guitars with them. So, we’re going to talk about some other options of acoustic guitars today that you can take on your vacations or sit in front of a camp fire, go to the beach, and not have to worry quite as much.

The first option would be to buy a cheaper full-sized acoustic that’s laminate so you don’t have to worry about it in the trunk or, you know, on the beach or near the campfire. The next thing would be the smaller sized guitars that a lot of companies are making these days, and the first one that I’ll talk about is the Martin LXM. It’s high-pressure laminate basically so it really responds well to humidity, to temperature, wherever you’re going to be, so there’s less worry about it and it’s a smaller scale but still playable.

[TIM JOYCE PLAYING ON A MARTIN LXM ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

And Martin makes two of these. This is the LXM, and then they make an LX1 which is the same guitar basically but with the solid top on it so the sound is a little better.

[TIM JOYCE PLAYING ON A MARTIN LX1 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

This is the Martin LX1. It’s the same principle as the LXM but it’s got a solid top on it so you might get a little bit better sound out of it. Another feature of a lot of these travel guitars is that companies are sending them with a nice gig bag because some of these are hard to find bags for because they’re odd sizes, much smaller, but a lot of them come with backpack straps, a little extra padding and pockets.

This is the Wechter 1710 travel guitar. It’s got a solid top and laminate -- wood laminate back and sides. Same principle as the other guitars, shorter scale, you know, just a little bit smaller. This one also comes with a really really nice gig bag so it makes your travel a lot easier. Having a solid top on one of these can actually do quite a bit for the sound. It’s such a small surface area. Even just putting a solid top on some of these smaller guitars can really help with the sound.

With the solid-top guitars, you know, even the travel guitars, you’re going to need to treat them like you would like another solid-top guitar, so you’re going to have to humidify it and take a little more care of it, but you know the pay off is the sound is a little better.

[TIM JOYCE PLAYING ON A WECHTER 1710 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

Travel guitars run generally from I would say about $150 to $300 or $350, and once you start to get into that range, you might want to think about just getting a full-sized acoustic as well.

We’ll ring somebody up.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]