Bootlegger Spade Headless Travel Pro Guitar

Bootlegger Spade Headless Travel Pro Guitar

MSRP: (UK) £TBC (US) $579

Over the last 40 years, many guitar builders have looked to challenge the standard when it comes to producing high-quality guitars without heads. This unconventional, but savvy design has arguably never been more affordable than with the release of the impressive Spade Headless Travel Pro Guitar from Bootlegger guitars. Here's Sam Bell to tell us more.

With headless Guitars becoming even more popular over the last five years, travel guitars don't seem to look quite so 'strange' as they once did. Travel guitars can nobe your main guitar, and there are a lot of great reasons to go headless, the main one being you save a lot of space, and in my opinion, you always look futuristic. What's not to love? I digress… In this issue of Guitar Interactive Magazine, I had the pleasure of checking out a great travel guitar, the Bootlegger Guitar Spade. This is part of a series of travel guitars from Bootlegger.

The particular model I checked out features two humbuckers (stock from Bootlegger), 3-piece hard maple body, monorail bridge/tuners and an awesome 24 fret neck.

The neck was very impressive, very smooth playing and of course, due to the ergonomic design of the instrument, the upper fret access is outstanding! It can be a bit tricky to get used to not having a headstock, often I'd find myself moving to an open position chord and being a few frets out, also due to the body size, you have to find a way to sit with it that you find comfortable, whilst it works nicely sitting on the right leg, the classical pose is much more reasonable with this particular guitar. Which made me realise the space it takes up whilst your playing it is also very small, you could practice in the car (stationary in the car park), on the train, plane or whilst in a queue. You would find it quite easy not to bump into anything whilst also comfortably playing. Fantastic!

The pickups sounded great, in fact, the whole guitar sounded great, and it only weighs 5 pounds. One would imagine that great sacrifices must be made to tone if you're cutting away a lot of wood and lacking a headstock; however, the bootlegger spade still had great character. The neck pickup is a mid-output humbucker which responded well to the volume and tone controls giving a wide range of tonalities from a round warm jazz sound with the tone rolled off on a clean setting, to a bluesy round crunch with a bit of light drive all the way to a singing lead tone with plenty of warmth and percussiveness. The bridge is also medium output, nice upper mid-range cut, plenty of sustain, great for rock and lead playing.

Who's this guitar for? Anyone! If you feel you have a need for a travel guitar, you probably need one, and this guitar coming in at an RRP of $579 is well worth a look. If your touring and need to practice whilst on the road, or if you're a travelling musician playing around lots of venues, ships and the like, then this is well worth looking at as well. Go check one out if you can!

For more information, please visit:

bootleggerguitar.com