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Acoustic Guitar
Martin Backpacker Steel String
Price: 261 EUR – 411 EUR
Price history
Cheapest seen
Most expensive seen
Availability: 2/10 (Very rare)
Martin's ultra-compact travel guitar: under 3 pounds with a narrow, elongated body shaped to pack small, a solid Sitka spruce top over sapele back and sides, and just 15 frets on a 24-inch scale.
About the Martin Backpacker Steel String
The Backpacker trades a conventional guitar body for a slim, elongated shape designed around portability rather than projection or low-end resonance - it is built to be carried on a trip, not to compete tonally with a full-size dreadnought. Despite the unusual proportions, construction uses genuinely solid tonewoods: a Sitka spruce top with Backpacker-specific non-scalloped bracing, paired with sapele back and sides.
The neck is select hardwood in a tapered shape, with an FSC-certified Richlite fingerboard (a resin-composite material rather than traditional wood, chosen for durability and sustainability) carrying simple white dot markers across just 15 frets - far fewer than a standard guitar, reflecting the instrument's compact scope. The scale length is a short 24 inches, the nut is 1 11/16 inches wide, and chrome-enclosed tuners keep the whole package lightweight at under three pounds. A gig bag is included.
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eBay 261 EUR Best price View details
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Reverb 389 EUR View details
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Reverb 411 EUR View details
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Source: https://reverb.com/item/62175970-martin-co-steel-string-backpacker-guitar-lefty
Sound character of the Martin Backpacker Steel String
The Backpacker's extremely small, narrow body sacrifices resonance and bass response for portability - it produces a thin, quiet, banjo-like plunky tone rather than a full acoustic voice, a deliberate trade-off for a travel instrument rather than a shortcoming to fix.
Technical data for the Martin Backpacker Steel String
| Body | Backpacker shape, solid Sitka spruce top, sapele back/sides |
|---|---|
| Neck | Select hardwood, tapered |
| Fretboard | Richlite composite, dot markers |
| Frets | 15 |
| Scale length | 24" |
| Nut width | 1 11/16" |
| Weight | Under 3 lbs / 1.4 kg |
| Introduced | 1992 |
Price history for the Martin Backpacker Steel String
Cheapest seen: 261 EUR · Most expensive seen: 411 EUR
Cheapest seen
Most expensive seen
The history of the Martin Backpacker Steel String
Martin introduced the original Backpacker in 1992 as an ultra-portable guitar for travel, camping and situations where a full-size instrument wasn't practical, designed by Bob McNally and Martin's engineering team around minimal size rather than adapting a shrunken dreadnought. The steel-string version has remained part of Martin's lineup as an accessible, genuinely solid-wood option for players who prioritize portability, distinct from Martin's small-bodied but still full-scale models like the 000-15M.
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