Blackstar has announced The Carry-on Travel Guitar, an electric that’s been designed for unparalleled portability.

The guitar, designed by Blackstar in association with Gordon Smith Guitars’ master luthiers, has a single-piece okoume body and neck, topped with a 19-fret laurel fingerboard, with a string-through design. The headstock sports 1:14 ratio tuners for stability, and for easy intonation, there’s a tune-o-matic-style bridge.

As it is a travel guitar, its scale length is a short 20.7 inches or 527mm. This is compensated for by the fact it ships with a heavy set of strings – 12-54, to be exact – making up the tension that’s lost by the shorter scale.

For electronics, the guitar packs a versatile set of tones into the smallest space by virtue of a single mini-humbucker that can be coil-split with the volume pot – meaning both humbucker and single-coil tones can be achieved.

The guitar comes in two finishes: Vintage White with tortoiseshell binding and a tortoiseshell scratchplate, and Jet Black with cream binding and a black scratchplate.

Three different configurations of the guitar are also available: you can purchase the guitar by itself, or as either a Standard or Deluxe pack of accessories. The Standard pack includes a premium travel bag (included even if you buy the guitar alone), a webbing guitar strap, three medium guitar picks, an A5 travel notebook and a mechanical pencil. The Deluxe pack adds a three-metre instrument cable and a spare set of guitar strings.

On top of these accessories, the packs include an amPlug 2 FLY headphone amp in the Standard pack or the FLY 3 Bluetooth mini-amp with the Carry-On Deluxe pack.

The guitar by itself lists for £299/$349/€369, with the Standard accessories pack for £349/$399/€419 and the Deluxe accessories pack for £419/$499/€499.

Find out more at blackstaramps.com.

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