A Walkup Guitar Stand essentially holds your acoustic or electric guitar up in the air allowing the artist to bounce from one instrument to another. Imagine having the ability to play one guitar, your main guitar for a song, then having the option to play another one that is strapped to a Walkup Guitar Stand ready for you to use whenever you want to. This will give the guitarist a richer dept of sound to give any tune a different feel to it.
I think that a Walkup Guitar Stand is something that I could of used back when I was playing all the time. It certainly would have come in handy when I played my classical guitar for the beginning section of La Villa Strangiato from Rush‘s Hemispheres Album.
I LOVED playing the beginning of it with my classical guitar at home alone practicing it over and over again. Unfortunately I never had the chance to use it while playing with a band, it just took too much time to change positions and guitars to make it sound fluid enough. I had never heard of a stand which would hold an acoustic guitar for a few bars then allows you to return back to your electric and finish your song.
The two most popular Walkup Guitar Stands out there in the market are the mbrace and Gracie stands.
Personally never looking at either one of these so let’s check out the mbrace Walkup Guitar Stand first shall we? On their website they provide us with a neat little demo of how it works. The strapping system they use looks like this would do the less damage to the back of your guitar.
Most guitarist are concerned about the look of their guitars. Some go to great lengths to keep their little babies in pristine condition. I think that little dings on a guitar are just character markings.
The part I don’t like that much is the handle lock and that feet of the stand. The handles look like the same ones that are on our home theatre system speaker stands. After some wear and tear they lose their hold so if they are the same type of ones that are on the mbrace. Now for The Gracie Walkup.
The Gracie Walkup Guitar Stand uses a different type of system that holds the guitar to the stand. The guitar sits in a cradle shaped like the bottom of the guitar. When looking closer at a picture on this other site, the base of the stand appears to be rock solid! It reminds me of a symbol stand from a drum hit. If your a drummer or know anything about symbol stands, look at the very top of the stand and you will see that it does look like one!
The only drawback that I have heard was that if you purchase a stand for your electric guitar, it only works for Fender guitars that have a front input jack on the top/front of the guitar. The way to get around this problem is by drilling a hole in cradle part of the stand that your guitar rest on.
So which one would you buy?
Keep on Jammin’
