Home : Highlights: : Gifts for Men : Men's Ultimate Gifts : Voyage-Air OM Cutaway w/case
 No More Lonely Hotel Rooms, With The Only Full-Sized, Concert-Quality Guitar You Can Carry on Any Airline — And it Plays Like a Dream!
I’ve spent too many nights in strange cities, wishing I could pass the time playing music, but unwilling to accept the risk and hassle of checking one of my good guitars through baggage. I’ve tried all the usual travel guitars, but they’re just too unsatisfying to play. So I was intrigued when the people at Voyage-Air, aware of my passion for the guitar, asked if I’d be willing to audition a performance-quality travel guitar. Sounded like an oxymoron
to me, but why not?
Merle Travis' son, Thom
Bresh, plays the Voyage-Air
Guitar in Concert!
Folds for Travel — What Voyage-Air has done is patent a folding neck using a sturdy double hinge that permits their guitars to literally fold in half and fit into a custom-padded, backpack-style, carry-on case. But what’s nearly beyond belief is that master luthier Harvey Leach has created an instrument that contains no compromises whatsoever in tone, feel, action, intonation, or sustain. Once you unfold the neck and tighten the single bolt through the neck block, simply tune Voyage-Air up to pitch, and begin playing.
The action is low, without buzzing, the tone is sweetly satisfying, and the dynamic range responds equally well to nuanced fingerstyle or powerful flatpicking. Materials are top notch, with your choice of solid quarter-sawn East Indian Rosewood back and sides, or select African Mahogany veneer that lacks the resonance of Rosewood, but with a pleasingly bright tone.
 All models use solid spruce tops(Rosewood models use solid Alaskan Sitka spruce) for optimum balance and bass response — with scalloped X-pattern bracing tuned to project a powerful midrange and strong treble. And all models come with a rosewood fingerboard and bridge, and impeccably dressed frets.
 Ingenious — A subtle but critical element of the Voyage-Air design is the fully enclosed nut, which keeps the strings in place when you fold the neck. Even has a zero fret, which I haven’t seen since my 1958 Gretsch 6120! The generously padded case can be carried like a briefcase or backpack, has room for a large laptop, and comes with Velcro neck cradle and an armored channel for the neck.
 But the amazing truth remains that, once you unfold the neck and tighten the bolt (without retuning!), you never once realize that you’re playing a guitar that folds in half! And the tone is every bit as good as the more expensive Martin, Santa Cruz and James Goodall guitars now in my collection. Brad Paisley and Steve Miller both play one, and that’s good enough for me! Rosewood models come with high ratio, goldfinished tuners with ebonized tuning buttons; grained ivoroid binding; and abalone rosette and fret markers.
 OM-Rosewood model includes softly rounded Venetian cutaway for enhanced access to higher frets. Dreadnaught model produces thicker midrange, and includes a vintage-style herringbone back stripe. Mahogany models come with black/white ivoroid binding and chromed tuners. All models come with tortoise pick guard; 25.5” scale length; 13/4” (OM) or 111/16” (Dreadnaught) nut width; and light-gauge, coated Cleartone strings produced by Phil Everly himself!
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