Emerald X5-OS

I have a new toy guitar!

I've always felt that one of the best locations to have a leisurely strum of your guitar is by the beach, or on a scuba live-aboard, but therein lies the eternal struggle - how to bring along your precious guitar to such places without exposing it to a guitar's mortal enemy - humidity?

Plus (and guitar owners will be well aware of this), it's damn @*#king difficult and inconvenient to travel via air with a full sized guitar.

I've always wanted to have a all-weather travel sized guitar - perfect to bring along to a tropical beach resort - but the options have always been rather limited.

The obvious answer of course would be a carbon fiber guitar, but these are uncommon, and tend to be bloody expensive as well.

Locally, the most obvious brand would be Composite Acoustics, but I tried and disliked their smallest sized travel guitar, the Cargo. It was heavier than expected for it's not so small size, but most importantly, I didn't like the sound of it - too dull, too heavy.

So looking around online, I stumbled across this brand of custom made carbon fiber guitars from Ireland called Emerald Guitars.

The brand Emerald and the name of the founder Alistair Hay would draw a blank with most people from this region, but there is indeed an oriental link.

Remember Wang Lee Hom? Remember seeing pictures at his live concerts of him with a fancy dragon styled guitar? That's an Alistair Hay original!

So anyways, I was intrigued with his smallest guitar, the X5-OS - smaller and lighter than the CA Cargo. After listening to the online clips on Youtube, I was fairly hopeful that it would sound brighter than the Cargo.

So earlier this year, after a series of fruitful email exchanges with Alistair, I bit the bullet and bought an X5-OS online, and I'm happy to report - its turned out to be everything I wanted from a humidity-proof travel sized guitar.

Sure it doesn't sound as good as a full sized Martin dread, but hey, can you do this with your precious Martin? =)

For more information, check out the official Emerald guitar website here.