The LooptronAxe Mk II

[ Note: this is a largely technical post about itty bitty guitars. Casual viewers may wish to run and hide or watch Gladiators or something. ]

Anyone who's been following this craziness for a while will know that I've sacrificed a great many things to ensure the entire Looptron rig can be easily transported to dark and dingy basement electro venues for live performance purposes and one of the mainstays of that philosphopy has been the ickle weeny (ah bless) guitar that I've been using - a Traveler Escape EG-1. For my requirements it's perfect - it plays remarkably well, there's sod all to go wrong on it and it's very lightweight so I can wear it throughout a gig and just fling it out the way when I'm playing synth or whatever. It's diminutive stature also means that when it it flung about I tend not to knock over everything. I've modded it a bit (higher output PAF Pro pickup than the one it comes with, locking tuners to make it quicker and easier to restring and a bolted on guitar strap so you can't accidentally drop it.)

Now a number of things have happened in recent months that have given me some cause for concern....

• First they announced the EG-2 at NAMM which is essentially the same beast but full of lots of electronics I don't need or particularly want. I have a laptop with Guitar Rig and Ableton for that, after all. :-)
• Secondly, I cracked the nut on the guitar I already have (no surprise given how often it gets bashed - if it had a headstock I probably would've snapped the damn thing off by now) and had to take it to get repaired which meant it was gone for a couple of weeks and it's been really quite odd rehearsing with a full size electric. It really gets in the way.
• Third - and perhaps most tellingly - Digital Village have knocked a third off the price and put "Limited Stock" notices all over their page which sort of implies that they're discontinuing this model in favour of the new one.

So I've decided I need some redundancy and bought another one. In shiny WHITE (so it matches my wristwatch). And another PAF pickup and some more locking tuners, etc. Only this time I'm gonna let a professional assemble it all and set it up properly so nothing rattles like my own attempted mod job did.

If anyone asked me a year ago whether I'd want to own a travel guitar I'd have said NO. Now I have two. And yet I don't travel anywhere more exciting than dingy basement electro venues.

Things never pan out quite how you think they're going to.