«The Travelist» – more than a travel bass

I was on holidays when the idea for The Travelist was born. I loved the novelty of taking my short-scale instead of my cherished long-scale bass with me as we travelled. It was simply easier to carry around and transport. But what if I could devise a system which would allow me to take a fully featured long-scale bass, with me, wherever and whenever I wanted to go somewhere. Not just on holidays but also for gigs and performances.

Review in Bassquarterly 03/19:
Review BQ 3-19

Review in Gitarre & Bass 03/20:
Review G&B 3-20

The Travelist is a long scale bass with Fender Jazz Bass specs. Within 5 Minutes, you can dismantle neck from corpus, remove strings and tuck your long-scale bass safely in your travel bag and get underway without a single tool! Roadies just fell over!
Two simple, but timesaving innovations make this possible.

Firstly, and of course crucially, I have taken great pains to design and customize The Travelist to be highly robust. I first needed to design reliable couplings between neck and body, if I was going to reduce length of the instrument without loss of playing quality. I decided to use light but very strong aluminum to achieve this goal. Due to an incredibly, geometrically snug fit and wide contact area within the freely slotted couplings, fit and string tension combine to allow superb transmission of vibrations between neck and body.

My second innovation regards the headpiece. To reduce length, once again, The Travelist had to lose its head. Strings are attached and fixed with clamp-screws in a cylinder and remain a single unit when dismantled. The cylinder is joined at a special tailpiece and the ball ends of the strings are fixed to the bridge.

 

 

 

In this video, I will show you how easy it is to take apart and also to reassemble the Starmanbass The Travelist:
youtu.be/KZmSFVeT91Q

Thus The Travelist is a wonderful mix of minimum length for transportation, but when reassembled loses nothing with regard to the joy of music and retains the wonderful feeling of playing a full-featured long-scale bass. With your customization ideas and my skills, the sky is the limit. A perfect union!

Despite all these alterations, the instruments provide the playing experience of a “real” bass guitar. All important specifications (corpus length, position of the strap buttons etc.) are identical to Fender Jazz bass specs.

Specifications

The Travelist is 100% made from local woods.

Body: Elsbeere (Sorbus torminalis), 2-K lacquer finish or oil/wax-finish
Neck: Maple, 1-piece, truss-rod double action, oil/wax-finish
Neck joint: High strength aluminum, Starmanbass®
Fretboard: roasted Robinia, radius 9.5″
Scale: 34″ longscale
Nut: Bone
Bridge/tuner: ABM headless-set
Head-piece: Starmanbass®
Pickups: Seymour Duncan QuarterPound Jazz Bass SJB3B, SJB3N
Strings: D’Addario EXL-170 regular light gauge, 0.045″–0.100″
Weight: 3.48 kg

The Travelist is also available in a fretless version.

«The Guitar» Space- the deluxe travel guitar

Starmanbass The Guitar Space incorporates exactly the same mechanisms and qualities as the Travelist bass. The neck is held together by string tension and can be dismantled and reassembled with ease. Even our clumsy guitarist was able to take it apart and refit it, without tools, within a couple of minutes. The marriage between neck and corpus is incredibly snug, strong and sounds great.

Specifications

The Guitar is 100% made from local woods.

Body: Elsbeere (Sorbus torminalis), 2-K lacquer finish or oil/wax-finish
Neck: Maple, 1-piece, truss-rod double action, oil/wax-finish
Neck joint: High strength aluminum, Starmanbass®
Fretboard: roasted Robinia, radius 12″
Scale: 24.57″ (624mm)
Nut: Bone
Bridge/Tuner: ABM headless-Set
Head-piece: Starmanbass®
Pickups: Good Tone “Stefan Schroff”- Set Zebra
Strings: Earnie Ball ParaDigm Slinky 9-42
Weight: 2.72 kg

 

 

 

Starmanbass «The Guitar» Customer review: youtube.com/watch?v=KJi_2i9nD04

 

Review in “Gitarre & Bass” 03/20: Review G&B 3-20

«The Guitar» Classic- the deluxe travel guitar

Starmanbass The Guitar Classic incorporates exactly the same mechanisms and qualities as the Travelist bass. The neck is held together by string tension and can be dismantled and reassembled with ease. Even our clumsy guitarist was able to take it apart and refit it, without tools, within a couple of minutes. The marriage between neck and corpus is incredibly snug, strong and sounds great.

Specifications

The Guitar is 100% made from local woods.

Body: Elsbeere (Sorbus torminalis), 2-K lacquer finish or oil/wax-finish
Neck: Maple, 1-piece, truss-rod double action, oil/wax-finish
Neck joint: High strength aluminum, Starmanbass®
Fretboard: roasted Robinia, radius 12″
Scale: 24.57″ (624mm)
Nut: Bone
Bridge/Tuner: ABM Single Bridge headless chrome
Head-piece: Starmanbass®
Pickups: Good Tone “Vintage 59 PAF” Set chrome
Strings: D’Addario EXL 110 Regular Light Gauge 010-046
Weight: 2.75 kg