Airlines and guitars

Tannin

Remind me, what's the best way to travel by air with an acoustic guitar?

Do I slack the strings off?  Any other thing?

I have to fly to Melbourne for the week (family business) and I don't like not having a guitar to practice on. I'm not going to take any of the expensive or hand-made ones, so it will be the Maton Messiah (still quite expensive at about the price of Standard Series Martin but it has a Hiscox case and being a factory model is readily replaceable) or the Guild (worth about half as much and my least favourite, but it only has a crappy cheap case.

So is it better to take the Messiah (good guitar, good case)  or Guild (less valuable guitar but crappy cheap case)?  I don't think I have a Hiscox case to fit the Guild but I'll check.  

Whistler

If you are going to put the guitar in the hold then the tougher the case the better, so out of the two you mentioned, the Hiscox would be the better choice and probably the only safe choice.

My experiece is that I have never had a damaged guitar but the cases have taken a real beating and not only on the corners, so there has to be some tossing of guitars by the baggage handlers onto other hard cornered objects to create that sort of damage.

shufflebeat

Don’t forget to take roll of good gaffer tape. Before the flight it’s useful to tape down the latches to avoid accidental opening. I recently found it useful for fashioning a temporary handle when the original had been snapped of my Hiscox pro dread case by Scandi chimps.

xchrisv

I would try to take it as carry-on if you can. On BA longhaul flights they are usually happy to store a guitar case in the closet in first class for the duration (even for those of us sat a little further back on the plane). I've also managed to get an electric gigbag in the overhead bin on a US internal flight but it was a bit tight, so you would probably be pushing it with an acoustic on smaller aircraft. 

Mellish

Mate, there's an easy answer over which guitar:

Which would you miss the most if (horror of horrors) something should happen to it? 

Go from there. 

 

ditchboy

I’d take the guild with the poor case personally. Or buy a guitar upon arrival and return it the day before you leave. 

Tannin

Cheers all. Helpful answers. I think I'll start by seeing if the Guild (my least-liked and least-valuable guitar) will fit into the brand new Hiscox case my (expensive) Mineur came in. As I understand it, it is important to have a nice snug fit inside the case, and my other cases are all for larger instruments. 

Though come to think of it, a (same profile but deeper) 808 case might work if I stuff some spare shirts inside it.

It's short flight and carry-on is out of the question. I did just what you suggest @ditchboy when I went to Sri Lanka last year: bought a cheap little Yamaha, played it for two weeks, gave it away when I left. That worked well.  

ditchboy

@Tannin surely in a thriving metropolis like Melbourne someone is doing guitar rental?

Tannin

Not that I know of @ditchboy, but yes, it's a big city, there is bound to be somewhere. 

Rentals in Australia are very different to rentals in the USA (and probably the UK, though I don't know about that). In the US, people often rent stuff (I know about cameras and lenses, guitars are doubtless similar). The rental companies are large and have a huge range of stuff with brisk turnover and  low prices.  In this country, it's not really a thing. Rentals are hard to find, you don't get much choice, and very, very expensive. For something like a nice 70-200/2.8 lens, which costs maybe £1800, if you rented it for more than a month or so you'd have paid enough to buy the damn thing! So not many people rent, and because not many people rent the companies charge a lot and because the companies charge a lot not many people rent. 

In any case, I'd have to go into Melbourne itself rather than just the airport on the edge of town, maybe right across the suburbs depending on where their office is, and that could take anything up to three or four hours. And return it a few days later. All of that expecting my brother to drive me when we both have urgent family business to attend to. 

But no matter. It turns out that the Guild fits nicely into my 808 Messiah case (Maton branded but made by Hiscox) with room for a couple of clean shirts on top to pack it out. It cost $1500 and it's probably worth $2000 now: we are not talking sheep stations. It's my least-favourite guitar but perfectly playable. That will do nicely. 

Do I slack the strings off?

ditchboy

Yeah I would. 

thomasross20

You need a parlour to put in overhead

sev112

I’ve always considered that (hard) guitar cases are mainly designed to carry them in and prevent them from “knocks”.  What they aren’t designed for is to be laid down flat (facing either way up in an airplane hold / luggage trolley) and protect the guitar from static or dynamic much higher and localised loads, especially on the widest main part of the body.

but that’s understandable, as most hard guitar cases are envisioned to be used as per the first sentence. Nd they don’t want to put more strength, materials and weight into a case that doesn’t always need it 
But it occurs to me that a manufacturer might consider whether their design could be modified or adapted in some way for the few times when it is in a plane rather than your car, by perhaps providing either with, or as an accessory, anything from a plank of hardboard to a uniquely designed Exo-Skelton from GRP etc to provide extra crush protection a removable second layer if you like ? 

Anyways consider to pack a shirt underneath as well as rather than just on top, because you don’t know what way up your case will be if/when a corner of something else is dropped on it 

and or consider a THIS WAY UP sticker on the face of the case with most shirts on that side

(ps that’s just imagining crush loading, not necks)

Mellish

Maybe the 808 case?

With that you could add packing to get the fit you like. The ideal would be a flight case but for a one-off round trip.....

 

ICBM

Tannin said:

As I understand it, it is important to have a nice snug fit inside the case

No, it isn’t - in fact, a loose fit is much better as long as the guitar can’t actually bang around inside. A few bits of spare underwear should fix that .

Even if the guitar can move it’s fine as long as the headstock can’t hit the end of the case. You specifically *don’t* want a tight fit unless the case is extremely rigid, since that allows external forces to be transferred to the guitar - a Hiscox is about the minimum level of rigidity that applies to. I wouldn’t fly with anything less.

I would still slacken the strings too - not right off but down to quite loose. That will reduce the risk of any damage being made worse by the tension.

guitarjack66

Could you forward the parcel(guitar) to your brother's address and pick it up when you get there?

Tannin

Just for completeness, I took the Guild over and back in the Maton 808 (Hiscox) case and all was well. 

While I was there, my brother (not the one with the CBS 12-string and the new Larrivee 6, the other brother from Queensland who mostly plays electric) took a shine to it. I think he will buy it (unless I give it to him first, which I might - I probably owe him a favour or two).

@ICBM interesting remarks about packing. I used to be a storeman and then later on a warehouse manager shipping goods all over the country by air and road, and it is a basic never-break-this rule of packing that you don't need a lot of packing material (bubble wrap, rice beans, foam, etc.) to avoid breakages so long as you never allow the goods to move around inside the carton. If someone drops the carton, you want the whole thing to bounce; you don't want fragile items flying around inside it.  I did think about it (briefly) but it was way too scary and I couldn't bring myself to break the rule. 

ICBM

Tannin said:

@ICBM interesting remarks about packing. I used to be a storeman and then later on a warehouse manager shipping goods all over the country by air and road, and it is a basic never-break-this rule of packing that you don't need a lot of packing material (bubble wrap, rice beans, foam, etc.) to avoid breakages so long as you never allow the goods to move around inside the carton. If someone drops the carton, you want the whole thing to bounce; you don't want fragile items flying around inside it.

That’s true up to a point, but at least as big a hazard to a guitar - a hollow and fairly fragile object - is being crushed. What you don’t want is the sides of the case being pushed in by half an inch, if there isn’t half an inch of slack before it reaches the guitar. So although you don’t want the guitar to literally bang around inside a much-too-large case, that plus a bit of soft padding to prevent movement is still better than a tight-fitting case, unless the case is so rigid it cannot move at all - and even a Hiscox is just a little flexible under really heavy loading.

I’ve seen a lot of damaged guitars from airline baggage handling, and crushing or bending does a lot more serious harm than a drop - it’s rare to find a damaged guitar in an undamaged case, other than Gibson headstocks if the strings haven’t been detuned, where it is true that the inertia of the head coupled with the string tension can snap them.

thomasross20

I thought this thread was about "aliens and guitars"

thomasross20

Tannin, what's a Larrivee 6? 

So what does, for example, Tommy Emmanuel do regarding hauling his Maton around?

Larrivee cases are a snug fit and not as tough as Hiscox. So are we saying a Hiscox which is a loose fit (padding it internally) is the solution here?

Mellish

@thomasross20 ; Larrivee 6 = Larrivee 6 string?

 

thomasross20

I need more details.
Haha