O.k., as I am not a Gibson expert at all, that was really difficult but I think I found it: "
Gibson Maestro Roadie Mini V"
I still don't know when that Roadie version was made, the modern version (without the
Roadie TRC) seems to be this:
http://www.gibson.com/en-us/divisions/maestro/electrics/mini-v/
That was a good one!
And it's really tiny!
Ralf
Damn! Not exactly right but right enough. It is a Maestro Mini-V
by Gibson. No Roadie designation.
I like this Youtube clip by the same guitarist better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uNpl5p90Yo
And formerly there was another clip floating around by a guy with some serious chops both as a guitarist and as a luthier doing some serious shredding on a yellow Mini-V.
OK so you might well ask why I mention the luthier aspect in the sentence above. Or alternatively, you might suspect my sanity in having bought such a thing (yes, it is mine).
Well .... addressing the second point fist, I must confess that I am sometimes given to very impulsive behavior. I saw the Mini-V in a discount/liquidator's shop and just had to have it; it was so totally absurd. And it was not expensive. And there was a small battery operated amp, unfortunately with no Gibson badging, which as it turns out has two settings - terrible sounding and even more terrible sounding. Well, it seemed like a good deal at the time
The box the guitar came in was sealed, and I did not open it until I got home. My hands shaking with anticipation, I removed the little monster from its box and checked it out. It was immediately apparent that there was something very wrong, very very wrong. It was not tunable. The bridge posts were more than 1/4" sharp of where they should be, and they were too close together. The bridge was jammed in between them so hard that I could not raise or lower the action or turn the compensation screws without risking stripping them. Also the plastic nut was glued on crooked. Also the tuners would not hold tension. I would tune them to pitch G, C, F, A+, D, G, and they would randomly start detuning, some little by little, some all at once.
OK, now let's go into a German tabloid newspaper subjunctive mood kind of groove here, where everything is presented in a grammatical form that indicates that the denotative content of the text is contrary to fact - I mean like none of the following is true, K?
If there were an impulsive kind of guy who might have bought such a guitar as the one mentioned above, one that might have been badged with the name of a major American guitar manufacturer who might have offered a 5 year warranty, this hypothetical impulsive guy might have duly registered the hypothetical guitar with the hypothetical manufacturer and then contacted their hypothetical technical support to put in a warranty claim in which the hypothetical impulsive guy listed all the hypothetical problems with the hypothetical guitar. An then the hypothetical tech support people might have written back to the hypothetical guy telling him to take the hypothetical guitar back to the hypothetical shop and exchange it for a new one. Now if this hypothetical guy were to have followed this advice, he probably would have found that the next guitar was exactly the same, but with the hypothetical nut glued on a little straighter, but only a little. He might then have registered this new hypothetical guitar with the hypothetical manufacturer and made a new hypothetical warranty claim. The hypothetical guy might have a long chain of humorous email correspondence between the hypothetical manufacturer's hypothetical tech support people and himself which might grow progressively more bizarre as it proceeds until the hypothetical tech support people quit responding to his hypothetical email. And if such correspondence were to exist, which it doesn't of course, the hypothetical guy might be able to post it here, except that he might feel that the hypothetical tech support people were decent guys who might have been caught in an impossible situation created by hypothetical stupid and greedy suits in Marketing back at the hypothetical manufacturer's head office, and so the guy might not post such correspondence if it actually existed.
OK. What about the lutier part? Well, the hypothetical guy might have ordered a new bridge from StewMac and then gone up to his local music shop and bought a cheap set of Grover (edit: Schaller) knockoffs (and he might be sorry now that he was impulsive and impatient and did not go further afield looking for machines that matched the screw hole pattern on the hypothetical guitar's headstock). He might have cut a tapered maple shim to raise the hypothetical neck and change its angle to assist the new bridge with compensation issues and to deal with its higher profile than the old bridge. He might have had to take the output jack apart and resolder it and stick it back together using locktite so that it wouldn't keep falling apart. He might also have taken the original bridge posts and milled their diamter down where they contact the bridge so that height and compensation adjustments were possible. The sockets for the original posts might have been a different thread pitch than the posts for the new bridge, never mind that they might have been set too close together, and the hypothetical guy might have been terrified of pulling the sockets out of the body because the body might have been made of such cheap crappy plywood with huge voids in it (that guitar might actually have a sort of chambered sound) and might have splintered. The hypothetical guy might then tried to do a setup on the guitar only to discover that while there might have been an allen key for truss adjustment included with the case, errr box, candy, there might not have been an actual truss rod in the hypothetical neck. The hypothetical guy might have removed the hypothetical big name manufacturer badged truss rod cover only to find nothing. He might have taken an awl and poked around a bit, thinking that a wad of painters tape might have been lacquered over, and still might have found nothing. Anyway the hypothetical guy might have it reasonably playable now, but there might be some things that he should get around to such as replacing the nut, fixing the holes on the back of the head stock, dressing the frets, and setting the radius on the bridge to match the fretboard, but just between you and me, he might be more than just a little bit lazy.
And you might well ask, "Why bother?" And it might be answered that it is insanely fun to play this hypothetical little monster. And if one were to perform live, one might be able to bring the house down by indulging in absolutely shameless grandstanding with this hypothetical little beast.
If one were insane enough to want one, one should watch yard sales and garage sales. One might notice that many of them being offered on CL and EBay are in a convenient "Ooops, I lost the bridge" condition and that there there is a
heavy focus on the big name manufacturer association. One might also notice that they might be very seriously over priced. One should probably not spend more than $20.
Now there might might be an issue with quality control or with 3rd party knock offs. One might note that some of these hypothetical guitars on Youtube do play in tune with their original bridges.
But there might also be something absolutely criminal here as well. This hypothetical instrument might have been intended for children. The hypothetical guy above might have cut himself at least once on poorly finished fret ends - not something to put in the hands of children. And there is no greater musical crime possible than to give an aspiring young musician an instrument that is completely unplayable. Shame on you hypothetical big name manufacturer. Shame. Greed and stupidity?
That's obviously something that was made in the Far East.
www.guitarsgalore.nl
Well Hans,
made might be far too polite a word for it.
Edit/Afterthought: The subtext of the hypothetical correspondence from the hypothetical tech support people might have been, "Read between the lines here. Get a refund. Take your money and run screaming."