First a foldable MIDI keyboard, now a travel guitar with a jointed, removable neck so it folds into a case:

Stewart Guitars Stow-Away (via)

Detach this sucker’s neck and you can fit the guitar into a briefcase, not to mention terrify your friends. (Oh, for the love of God, you broke your guitar!) Bonus: heightened terror alerts won’t make people think you’re carrying a gun. They make a similar model called the Road-Runner.

But while we’re at it, what else could you put in your mobile guitar studio carry bag? Here are a few suggestions from CDM posts past:

1. Vox DA5 miniature practice amp (see comments for similar models)
2. Fender keychain pocket tuner
3. iPod Nano with iRocker pocket tuner, metronome, virtual chord book, fingerings, and scales
4. Treo running miniMusic software for scoring, composing, beats
5. Laptop running Guitar Rig 2, made easier by Guitar Rig’s bundled, compact interface/foot pedal combo. And soon, Intel MacBooks should be supported

Guitar and bass players, what’s in your bag?

I thought they might be sold out by now, but Ableton says they have a few more of their custom Ableton-branded Nerdbags for your laptop. They’re the perfect gift for your digital musician friends and family — or yourself, for that matter. I love mine, and would happily have two. It’s one of my favorite luggage choices for the fashion- and practicality-conscious laptop-toting musician.

The life of a mobile musician one can be a trying one: you always wind up with a few extra pieces of gear that don’t quite fit in your bags. That’s why, even if you don’t own any Moog gear, the new Moog multi-purpose gig looks promising. Thick foam dividers and shell keep your musical toys safe, there’s an extra side compartment, and you can throw the case over your shoulder for all your extra effects and soundmakers. Most importantly, the dividers can be moved around with velcro for packing different gear.

Sure, you could raid your local camera shop for something similar, but then you wouldn’t have the Moog logo. And it’s just US$59. Deliveries start January 1, so if it goes on my gift guide, it’ll have to be for Orthodox Christmas / St. Nicholas Day. (Or my birthday, January 13.) Pic of the innards after the break.

Moog Multi-Purpose Gig Bag [Preorder from Moogmusic.com]

In other news, this is CDM story number 1,000! Woo-hoo! Watch for our best stories of 2005 once we get near New Year’s Eve.

Live 5 is here, and it’s a major upgrade to everyone’s favorite digital audio workstation-you-can-perform with. And we’ve got a bevy of other updates from Ableton.com: Download the upgrade and take advantage of a special deal on Live + Operator, watch behind-the-scenes and tutorial movies, download the demo version of 5 (which has only a save disable; you can otherwise use it free for an unlimited time), tour the new version, or — here’s a nifty bit — check out the uber-hip nerdbag custom-made for Ableton. Wrap that laptop in recycled materials. (Rubber dinghies and air mattresses get a second lease of life, your PowerBook gets a second lease on cool. Excellent.)

Oh, yeah, and last but not least, Friday night is the Ableton 5 launch party here in NYC at Tonic, complete with visuals and live music.

See also CDM’s take on what’s new and why you’ll be hearing even more mash-ups than you are now. But don’t think this is a toy for mash-up artists: this software will continue to appear at a club or studio near you. More on all these stories soon . . . it’s suppertime at CDM HQ.

The ThinAmp from AXL,
introduced in January at NAMM, is a portable amp packed into the size
of a laptop: only 2" thick and just 5 lbs. (!) You can literally fit it
into a laptop bag — in fact, you can probably fit it and your laptop
into a laptop bag. The amp is geared at guitarists, but Synthtopia reviews it and finds it suitable for laptop, too.

Of course, you can't expect a whole lot of sound out of a 2" amp; while
it has EQ and DSP presets for reverb, vibrato, flanger, chorus, and the
like, the ThinAmp's sound will be a bit thin with just 10W of power. On
the other hand, for US$140 street and at this size, this is pretty
tempting.

The folks at Novation, the synth company now owned
by Focusrite, have sent along some images of their X-Station
keyboards which are finally shipping here in the US. In addition to new
keyboards with more keys, the company has now formally announced
specially-designed bags for the X-Stations as we first glimpsed at AES
in October. The 25-key Novation bag does look noticeably larger (but
slimmer, interestingly) than M-Audio's Oxygen Tank.