Cute Lil Squier Hello Kitty Mini Guitar

June 29, 2007 by Jo Minor 


So you’ve got a little girl in the family who wants to be a rocker. Or maybe you’re just a punk who likes to make people notice you. The Squier Hello Kitty Mini guitar is a pink, girly electric guitar in the traditional shape of a Fender Stratocaster. In fact, you’d be surprised to find out this is really a rocking, good sounding axe. Don’t think of this as just a toy.

For a little company and product history, you have to start with Fender guitars. Leo Fender started the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company in 1946. The first electric guitar style they came up with was called the “Telecaster,” and it was quite popular. But when they realized that many guitarists wanted a tremelo, which the Telecaster lacked, they went to work on a new design.

As a result, in the early 1950’s, Fender and another instrument designer named Freddie Tavares came up with an electric guitar style that has become one of the most familiar and popular of all time. They called it the “Stratocaster.” The name was chosen to make people think of modern technology. It doesn’t ring a bell with us today - just sounds like a guitar! But at the time, the people were familiar with a jet aircraft called the “Stratofortress,” so the name Stratocaster sounded advanced and futuristic. One feature they added when designing the Stratocaster is that they carved the back of the body to make it fit against the player’s body better.

By the early 1980’s, other, cheaper companies had copied the Fender Strat so much that Fender’s sales were falling off. To combat this trend, the Fender Company acquired the Squier brand of guitars to use as a second line. Squier guitars are actually Fender guitars, but in a reduced price and made for students.

Hello Kitty is a registered trademark name of a popular cartoon character. The simple white cat face is loved by little girls everywhere.

Of course, all little girls also love the color pink. Some little girls want to grow up to be rockers, too. So the combination of all these facts led to the release of the Squier Hello Kitty electric guitar in 2005, and the Squier Hello Kitty Mini soon after in July, 2006. It’s really a low priced Fender Strat dressed up to appeal to your daughter. Sounds good through a Fender Blues Jr. amp.

Advantages: Reviewers say over and over that they were surprised buy the good sound and quality of this guitar. It’s a good guitar for shredding or playing rhythm and has a good “punky” sound. It’s really a good student guitar and has a better sound than most guitars designed for new players.

If you like the looks of this guitar, it’s an advantage. There are other pink guitars out there, but none of the others have the Hello Kitty insignia, and the shape of a Strat. In addition, you could choose to get the guitar in black. The Hello Kitty Mini is built on a little smaller scale than the basic Hello Kitty guitar, so those smaller hands can get some experience.

The three pickups will give your young rock mistress a chance to experiment with sounds and techniques.

The list price of the Squier Hello Kitty Mini electric guitar is only $248.99, making it extremely affordable as a first guitar. Considering the quality and sound, it is really a bargain. Most people who’ve bought it think it was worth the price and then some.

Disadvantages: This is a beginner’s guitar, and the small size will make it hard for a larger person to play.  Squier also makes a plain, single-pickup Hello Kitty guitar for older teens and anyone else who wants to play a girly pink guitar.

Specs:

  • Strat styled hardwood body
  • Maple c-shaped neck with satin polyurethane finish
  • Maple fingerboard with 9.5 inch Radius
  • 20 medium frets
  • 3 single coil pickups
  • one volume knob, one tone knob
  • 5-position switch for pickups
  • hard tail, strings through body, 6-saddle bridge
  • Standard die-cast tuners
  • Chrome hardware
  • 1-ply white pickguard
  • 22.75 inch scale length
  • 1.61 inches wide at the nut
  • Pink dot inlays on the pink guitar
  • Black dot inlays on the black version
  • Fender Super 250L strings, nickel plated steel, sizes .009 to .042

If you like this kind of thing, you’ve got to check out the Fender Hello Kitty website. It features photos of average girls playing electric guitars, a journal of interviews with female songwriters, and more.

Read the original press release from the Fender company, dated January 2006.

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