Lil’ Thrasher and Lil’ Shredder Series Guitars

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Published on Monday, 20 April 2015 00:00

Written by Frank J. Pasquale

Late in the evening hours of December 31st. of 2014, my good friend Drew Creal and I created a silly little one minute video of us jamming some Thrash Tunes on my daughters First Act Pre-School Kiddie Instruments.

 
http://youtu.be/YD-1fBWHioA

We posted this on YouTube and it exploded! Within a week it had over 2 million views and was shared and posted everywhere. Literally every major media outlet from Time Magazine to Billboard and Rolling Stone to Revolver had reposted it.
After our video went viral I was contacted by Josh Roy, the Head of Marketing for First Act, who thanked me for giving them such great promotion. I am certain it was the most direct advertising that First Act has ever had. Josh had graciously offered to send us unspecified amounts of First Act guitars and drums if we would just keep making videos.

While Drew agreed to take the offer for the free drums and guitars, I had graciously and respectfully declined Josh’s offer. I did not want to be associated with First Act Guitars.

 
The reality is that the guitar that I used was my daughter’s toy guitar and is quite honestly the worst excuse for guitar that I have ever seen in my life. There is no way that anyone could ever learn to play on this thing.  I played the entire song in the video on one string because the guitar would never stay in tune. It is so poorly made that he neck is angled in the wrong direction. It is indeed an atrocity! I would have never bought this guitar except for the fact that my daughter wanted it because it was Pink.

As a builder and a guitar teacher for over 20 years I despise these types of instruments. These are made very cheaply and usually come with an extremely low price tag. They are made this way so that parents and grandparents can buy a guitar for their little pre-school prodigy to see if there is some miraculous hidden talent,and if there is no hidden talent then they are only out a few bucks. The problem is that no one can ever really play on these things. A child may have all the talent in the world but they will never recognize it or achieve any kind of potential with these types of instruments because they will spend all their time fighting the guitar.  I have been playing for over 30 years and I could barely get this guitar through a minute and a half of playing.

This forced us to re- think our focus as a guitar company because we were bombarded on our website with people who wanted to know where they could get these Pre School Thrash Instruments.  Clearly there was a demand so of course we got crackin’ and set out to design our Lil’ Thrasher and Lil’ Shredder Series of Guitars. We wanted to be able to offer a Premium Grade “mini-sized” guitar that would have the look and feel of a full sized professional guitar.  We wanted it to be every bit a Pasquale Custom Guitar but sized for kids.

The first thing we had to do was scale down the body. This may sound easy but it was more complicated than we expected. We wanted it to be thin and small enough for a 6 year old to play, yet we still wanted it to be a fully functional guitar that would serve well into the teen years.
A typical electric guitar is 1-3/4” thick. We thinned our mini guitar body down to 1-3/8” which is considerably more comfortable for small players. However, this added some new challenges. We needed to be aware of the depth of the neck pockets and the pickup. We had to make sure we could still get a good neck joint with solid transfer of vibration and that there was enough wood left to direct-mount the pickup.

We also had to be limited to the type of bridge we use because the body would be too thin to use a tremolo. We opted for a top loading direct mount bridge and complimented it with a set of Hipshot locking tuners. This is for the best for this type of guitar because the truth is that you don’t need a tremolo on a beginner guitar. But we can still offer thicker body and a Floyd Rose locking tremolo if a customer wants one.

The last thing we had to do to the was scale down the shape to fit the size of our little players.

The next MAJOR challenge we faced was downsizing the neck.  This was going to be a challenge. We had to get the perfect fret scale. We needed the entire guitar to be small enough for a child but still wanted it to feel like a “real” guitar. In addition to this being for kids, we   really wanted this to be a cool “travel” guitar for adults as well so it would have to feel very familiar. We needed the perfect fret scale.

 
We looked into banjo fret scales but they were still too long. We then looked into mandolin fret scales but they are very short and we feared that this scale would be too “twangy” and would cost us the low end bass register. We found our solution when we tested the fret scale for a Baritone Ukelele. It gave us the perfect distance from the nut to the bridge that would allow us to make the guitar the size we wanted but still felt like a real guitar with plenty of lows, mids and highs. We kept the neck heel the same as the rest of our guitars and kept a 1-11/16 nut to help retain the feel of a traditional guitar.

 
One last feature that we added was for Little Shredders who may be too young to count.  Our Prototype Guitar had top dot fret markers but didn’t have any face dot markers. Our production models will feature Color Coded Fret Markers on the top and the face of the fret board to help Little Shredders learn their frets even if they haven’t learned their numbers yet.

Now that we had the body, neck and fret scale set we just treated the design like any other guitar. We fitted it with a top mount bridge and a set of Hipshot Locking Tuners to guarantee that our Shredders would NOT have the same problem tuning problems that EVERY other kids guitar has. These guitars are built to rock and they WILL stay in tune.

When it came time for the electronics, we put in a custom Pasquale Custom Ceramic Humbucker and a single volume knob. Simplicity at its finest ,but still able to capture and sound a junior shredder could want.

We offer these guitars in two models. Our Lil’ Thrasher Guitar is a scaled down version of our Vengeance V Guitar and our Lil’ Shredder Guitar is a scaled down version of our Modern Strat guitar.

These are fully functional professional grade custom guitars that are available in either “Gotham Flat Black” or “Frost Berry Pink” as standard colors. But of course we are a custom shop so anything is possible.

Each guitar starts at $595 by itself or they are available in a matched combo pack with a Line 6 Spider IV amp with a cable, strap and a tuner for $699.

We can also offer custom options and downsize ANY of our Signature Models.

Don’t waste your time on worthless children’s instruments that don’t work and don’t waste your money getting your kid an X-Box or guitar video game that will teach them nothing…Get your kid the real thing and Let There Be Rock!