Travel Guitars
locker room bench, an old classical guitar
fretboard and other scavenged parts,”
says Kevin Smith, founder and luthier of
Vagabond Guitars. Smith, like many other
travel guitar creators, manufactured a
lightweight prototype out of personal
necessity rather than entrepreneurial spirit.
The result has led to a burgeoning career
as a builder based in Castleton, New York.
Most of the work behind a handcrafted
Vagabond guitar is completed by Smith
and a few trusted employees.
Phil Green, founder of Miranda Guitars,
located in picturesque Los Altos, California,
comes from an even more unlikely background. During the 1970s and 1980s,
Green researched and developed two
prominent contributions to the medical
field: ultrasonic imaging and minimally
invasive “robotic” surgery. Although Green
received high acclaim for his medical
accomplishments, he always wanted to
fulfill a long-held dream of conceptualizing
a “full-sized guitar with the portability of a
violin, yet the feel, playability and full-bodied sound of an acoustic instrument.”
As time passed, Green slowly became
taken with the recurring thought of creating
a compact, reliable travel guitar. Operating
on pure imagination and determination, he
hit the ground running and built his own
guitar company based on a concept of a
take-apart guitar. Green and his cohorts at
Miranda have been in production for the
past five years.
Don’t Mess With a Good Thing
Green and Smith both have origin stories worthy of Fortune Small Business,
but Traveler Guitar’s Corey Oliver has an
equally ambitious tale of stumbling upon
the business of travel guitars. In 1995,
Oliver had a prototype for the Pro Series
– Traveler’s first guitar – fall into his lap,
inspiring him to become financially invested in the company. Soon after, Oliver
took control and put production into high
gear; these days, Oliver and his Traveler
team have over ten different models of
acoustic and electric travel guitars. The
company has even spawned a travel bass,
the Escape MK-II. Out of the three compa-
