So, I’m a guitar player (relatively new; coming up on 3 yrs), and I travel a fair bit for work. Every time I’m in a hotel room somewhere, winding down at the end of the day, I start wishing I had a guitar with me (especially because it usually means I go an entire week without practicing, which sucks). But I really don’t want to haul a full-sized guitar.
So I’ve been thinking about travel guitars. Coincidentally, my guitar teacher has been thinking about ukuleles. She wants to start having her students learn a little uke, just to break us out of our tracks a little and have some more fun.
Also coincidentally, I’m going to Hawaii (Honolulu) in January for a much-needed break.
I originally figured I’d just buy a cheap used acoustic there and sell or leave it before I came back. But now, with all signs pointing to uke, I’ve been rethinking that…
So, I want something travel-ly, I want something uke-y, and I want something that will still help me with my guitar practice (IOW, I don’t want to spend ALL my time on the road practicing uke–I’d rather be practicing guitar, so that the practice translates a little more directly). As a result, I’ve been looking at guitaleles, like the Yamaha GL-1. It’s a nice cross: It’s basically tuned like a guitar with a capo at the 5th fret, so all the chord shapes work exactly the same as on a guitar. But at the same time, this means that the top 4 strings are tuned like a ukelele, so one can play uke-style songs by just using the 4 high strings.
I played one last night–not bad. (The nylon is harder to get used to than anything else. I’ve only played metal strings…) The price is right ($99), and reviews online seem to praise it universally as an excellent deal (surprisingly good quality despite such a low price).
But here’s my big question: Should I buy the Yamaha here, on the mainland (I actually don’t have any more travel until the end of the year, so that’s not an issue), just to make sure I have it when we go to Hawaii (and then beyond), or should I wait until we hit the islands to go uke shopping? Obviously, I’ll be in the homeland of ukuleles… Will I find a better guitalele/deal? (I’m not looking to drop hundreds or thousands on one … this is still, in the end, an inexpensive travel instrument for me.) Or should I just buy the Yamaha here and get it over with?