Rathbone Navigator Review

The Rathbone Navigator RNSMCE is a compact, short-scale, travel electro acoustic guitar featuring a baby-grand auditorium body with a solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides and a cutaway.

Designed with a wide range of uses in mind, from travelling guitarists looking for a compact travelling companion, guitar players of a smaller stature or anyone who wants a guitar that’s comfortable to play whilst sitting on the sofa, the Navigator has the potential to be a great all-rounder to a wide range of guitarists and playing styles.

Let’s find out if it navigates you to the right places!

First Impressions and Build Quality

Opening the box reveals a black gig bag with brown edging and a contrasting yellow ‘Rathbone’ logo on the front pocket. The bag is pleasingly, and surprisingly, more padded than you’d expect for a guitar of this price (if you’re lucky enough to get one at all!) and bodes well for the ‘travelling’ nature of this travel guitar.

Gigbag opened and standard polystyrene guitar liner suitably recycled, the guitar itself features a natural-satin, sunburst finish. According to Rathbone, this is a ‘hand-rubbed’ finish that may vary in brightness and colour from guitar to guitar, nonetheless, this particular Navigator’s ‘burst is probably best described as a ‘Light-burst’ using Gibson lingo.

In the hand, the Navigator’s satin finish has a smooth, tactile feel to it with no rough edges, lumps, bumps or stickiness that comes with a cheaper hi-gloss finish.
The abalone edge binding and rosette, along with the subtly stylish ‘compass’ fretboard inlay, all add to the premium look and feel of the guitar, belying its modest price point.

Playability and Sound

Sitting down to play the Navigator, it’s immediately apparent the smaller dimensions of the guitar make for a comfortable, easy playing experience. The shorter scale length makes chords less of a stretch and strings easier to fret due to their lower tension.

The compact body sits well on the leg and balances nicely. Without having a large lower bout, you can comfortably sit on a sofa or armchair whilst playing the Navigator without your elbow sitting at an uncomfortable angle.

The set-up straight out of the box is pretty good - no rattles or buzzes and it has an action ideal for strumming chords. For our taste, and to lower the action just a little, a quarter turn on the truss rod was all it needed for a slightly slinkier feel as you move up to the higher frets.

Acoustically, the Navigator has an even, balanced tone, with more body and low-end than you’d generally get with a smaller bodied instrument. Standard strumming, fingerstyle and even a bit of lead playing are all handled well without anything obvious sonically, to tell you that you are playing a smaller guitar.

Plugging in the Navigator gives you much the same as above, albeit with the added flexibility of the onboard controls to adjust various elements of your tone. Pleasingly, the side-mounted preamp is also home to a guitar tuner, a very welcome addition to a guitarist on the move.

Verdict

The Rathbone Navigator is something of a rare guitar. It manages to pack good looks, great build quality, easy playability and, probably most importantly, a great tone, into a compact package that will appeal to seasoned travelling guitarists, home strummers, brand new players and everyone else in between.

Crucially, It delivers all of this at an incredible price and even gives you extras in the form of an onboard tuner and good quality padded gig bag.

If you’re in the market for a stylish, compact, highly capable, great sounding guitar, you could do a lot worse than steering yourself towards the Rathbone Navigator.