Höfner Shorty Deluxe BK

This travel guitar could be a great product but it possesses some major shortcomings that could just be a mild annoyance to some but could render the product unusable for other people.

The neck, the action and the feel are pretty decent for a guitar of its size, with a surprisingly solid sustain and sound when unplugged. That said, the guitar doesn't stay in tune for more than 15 minutes (going completely out of tune if playing for an hour long practice session), so new locking tuning pegs might be needed. If you break a string you will need to remove the entire bridge to change a string. I have not tried using the guitar with an amp but I tried plugging to an interface and have gotten mostly muddy results.

The most serious issue is the extreme neck dive and the only solutions are using a heavy counterweight (around 2kg) tied to the other end of the strap (which makes it really heavy and hurts my back) or using an acoustic strap tied to the headstock. It could be a great product through some modding (new tuning pegs, bridge and pickups), but not sure if it is worth it.

This is a guitar which you play when you don't have any other by your side. The body is extremely small and you can play it almost only standing with a strap, otherwise it is just too weird because of the extremely pronounced neck dive and size (you don't feel the small size that much when you play standing). It takes some time to get used to it in order to be able to play anything on it. Also, fret ends were very sharp, with frets being rough.

I ended up turning it into a project guitar - I removed the headstock and turned it into a headless guitar (bought a headless guitar bridge online and screwed it to a 3D printed piece which I screwed directly to a guitar body), and now it fits in a checked baggage when you go on a flight, so it is very practical for flights and trips because of the size. When headstock is removed, neck dive isn't a problem anymore.

Soundwise, it is what you can expect from a guitar in this price range.