Wandre Mini Bass Model Semi-Hollow Body Electric Bass Guitar (1966), made in Cavriago, Italy, blue Polyester finish, plywood body, plastic sheathed aluminum neck with rosewood fingerboard, black tolex hard shell case.

The Wandre guitars story is a book-length epic tale of the battle between creativity and commerce, and there is a wonderful if unfortunately rare 2014 book "WANDRE-The Artist Of The Electric Guitar" by Marco Ballestri available for the curious! After some years of unstable company financials and underwhelming export sales, Pioli was reaching the end of his production rope by 1966-7. Over the past half-dozen years he had been repeatedly advised to create an instrument aimed at a broader appeal to young players that might be put off the flashy, exotic oddities that constituted much of Wandre's catalog. The diminutive "Mini Bass" was one of his final instrument designs, more conventional than some but still embodying many of his eccentric creative touches.

At the time "Mini" was a buzzword, between the mini-skirts and mini-cars in the news in Italy at the time. Pioli actually owned a Mini-Cooper automobile; his take on the mini-concept was a matching guitar and bass with simple construction and details and a distinctive compact look. These are built on a small, somewhat blob-like mostly hollow body with a larger lower cutaway and an upper protrusion with no functional purpose. This is made of the thin plywood Wandre's round factory specialized in finished in their trademark heavy Polyester, in this case in a dark midnite blue. The back is arched but the top is flat, multi bound along the edge.

Like the most earlier Wandre bass guitars this instrument has a guitar-scale neck. Up into the mid '60s guitars and electric basses from the round Cavriago factory share the same layout, design and materials; the basses are simply 4-string guitars with heavier strings. By 1965 Wandre had made a few longer scale basses but true to its name the Mini Bass reverted to this layout. It also features a single late-model trapezoidal Davoli pickup mounted in the neck position, wired to a simple top-mounted control panel. The bridge is mounted directly to the top, made of milled aluminum with adjustable saddles under a black plastic cover.

Besides the aesthetics, the most trailblazing aspect of Wandre guitars is the aluminum core neck, in this case simply bolted to the body with no extended centerpiece. Over a decade before Travis Bean or Veleno, Pioli's necks featured a thin, rounded aluminum core in this case encased in a black plastic sheath which gives a more traditional feel than raw metal. The fingerboard is rosewood, bound with large plastic dot inlays. Bolted to the neck is a long drooping single-sides headstock carrying individual guitar sized tuners with large "lollypop" plastic buttons. This has an inset silver section under clear plastic with a small "Davoli" logo badge at one corner. The aluminum nut spacer has a small Wandre logo stamped in.

The back-painted clear plastic pickguard has silver piping on the face and abstract script letters spelling out a very psychedelic-looking "Mini Bass". It also carries the Davioli logo and a small "Wandre parent, made in Italy" legend. This bass is a very late product of Wandre's round factory in Cavriago, towards the end of his amazing creative run. Not all that many of these were assembled, but they help put a whimsical coda on the Wandre oeuvre. Although about as small as a bass guitar gets this is a distinctive and very playable instrument, designed with love by Italy's greatest artist of the electric guitar, Wandre Pioli.

Overall length is 44 1/4 in. (112.4 cm.), 16 in. (40.6 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 1 7/8 in. (4.8 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 24 3/4 in. (629 mm.). Width of nut is 1 5/8 in. (41 mm.).

This pretty adorable Mini-Bass model is a nice example of this rare late-period Pioli creation, fully original and if showing some wear here and there still well-preserved for its age with all components intact. The original heavy polyester finish on the body is mostly relatively clean with some fairly random checking lines and dings, scrapes and rub marks overall. There are some deep check lines on the top and a couple of filled chips, one off the bass side of the pickup, and the other off the forward corner of the bridge. There is a larger filled-in chip filled in on the lower side of the neck pocket, another on the peak of the upper bout and some scuffing to turn of the back edge. The somewhat fragile plastic sheath covering the aluminum neck is nearly perfect, not cracked or peeling at all, while the end of the droopy headstock has some chipping.

All hardware is original and intact with no cracks or breaks to the plastic and only minor wear, most notably scuffing to the knobs and bridge cover. The electronics are original and work apparently as designed; the pots are mini-shaft Italian pieces and the knobs do not grip them all that well, so care must be taken there; The tone control has a pretty minimal effect in operation. The jack is a standard phone jack instead of the 5mm Geloso piece found on earlier Wandres.

The frets and fingerboard show hardly any wear, and the bass plays well and sounds good within the limitations of its very short scale. This "Mini" is the "cutest" of the fantastic Wandre creations we have been blessed with recently and is one of the smallest, lightest electric basses ever made. With its super-short scale it is a breeze to play, its punchy if plunky sound powered by the always good sounding Davoli pickup. It lives in a recent rectangular HSC. Overall Excellent - Condition.