Times Union
By STEVE BARNES Senior writer

The Vagabond guitar has a pick-up-and-go quality

As Kevin Smith tells the story, he wanted to bring his guitar to a party, but the instrument was too big to tote on his motorcycle.He liked it, friends said it sounded almost as good as a full-size acoustic, and Smith could take it with him on his bike or carry it aboard a plane.So he built a smaller one. When fellow musicians expressed covetous admiration, Smith, a trained woodworker and a performer himself, built another. Then another. And another. He dubbed it the Vagabond Travel Guitar.

That was 25 years -- and 2,000 guitars -- ago. Today, Smith, 52, and his daughter Melanie O'Malley, 21, make about 50 Vagabonds annually from the second-floor woodshop in Smith's Castleton home. Except for metal components including tuning pegs and wire for frets, Smith and O'Malley fabricate the parts themselves. The pair cuts the guitar top -- or face -- from solid spruce, uses mahogany for the neck, rosewood for the fretboard and bridge, laminated Russian spruce for the sides. A part called the bridge saddle is crafted from scraps of Corian, the synthetic material popular for countertops.

A Vagabond weighs 2 pounds, or 3 1/2 in the included carrying case, made for Smith by Tough Traveler in Schenectady. The small body, only 8 inches at its widest, is about a foot narrower than standard acoustics. The laws of physics and acoustics dictate that Vagabonds will be softer and have less resonant bass notes than full-size guitars, but Smith prides himself on the authenticity of their sound and beautiful tone.

Customers nationwide own Vagabonds, as do guitar players from Italy, France, England, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

Neil Young has a Vagabond. Bob Dylan received one as a gift. Trey Anastasio, former leader of Phish, plays one, though Smith didn't know that until he saw Anastasio holding a Vagabond on a magazine cover. In an otherwise unrelated "At home with ..." feature in a St. Louis newspaper this past March, a French literature professor is pictured holding a Vagabond.

Submitted to BNB by CL