Vintage 1980's Rare Hondo Chiquita Yellow Travel Guitar

This is a hard item to list. This has been in my family since it was bought new but has never really played just been sitting in closets throughout the years. Has a mean tone and quite the bite. You can totally pull blues tones, or crunchy desert rock out of this little machine. Has dings, scratches and stickers throughout. One of the control panels on the back was replaced and another new one will be included if I can find it. The knob is new but as close to the original as I could find and the pickup switch was replaced. Everything functions as it should and the pot is clean and tuners stay in tune. Currently strung with lighter strings and will need heavy strings to be able to be tuned to standard tuning. I really don't want to see this go.


Details

This guitar was designed by Mark Erlewine in the early 1980s with input from Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.  The idea was to create a short-scale electric guitar that you could take as carry-on luggage and play on a bus, plane or wherever.  The guitars were manufactured by Samick in Korea and sold by Hondo, a division of IMC.   Several different colors and styles were made. The quitar lister in this auction is yellow and has 2 pickup, one single coil in the neck position and one hum bucker in the bridge position. 

Despite it's low-cost manufacturing, the guitar is very high quality.  It has a neck-through design, a nice Schaller bridge and the original DiMarzio pickups.  

The Chiquita weighs just over 4 pounds, making it incredibly light.  It measures just 28" end-to-end, almost a foot shorter than a typical electric guitar.  The Chiquita achieves its compact size by using a short-scale of just 19" which feels like you're playing a regular full scale guitar with a capo on the 5th or 6th fret. 

Since it uses heavier gauge strings (.013) you're able to get a very good tone out of the guitar and can still play in standard tuning (EADGBE).  The Chiquita sounds great for open chords, power chords etc.  But the compact scale can take some getting used to, especially as you get to the 12th fret and beyond.  Because of the short scale, you don't have to bend very far to get a half-step or two of tone.  Which is good because the heavier gauge strings give more resistance than typical light-gauge electric strings.  But again, it's mostly just a question of getting used to it.

Unfortunately, Hondo discontinued the Chiquita in 1985 and these guitars have become somewhat rare now.

This all original 1980's Hondo Chiquita Travel Guitar is similar to the one Michael J. Fox plays in the opening scene of "Back to the Future" (his was a single pickup model). Billy Gibbons, of ZZ Top, also played a Chiquita live on stage. Videos of both can be found on Youtube. This guitar plays and sounds great. It comes complete with OHSC. It is a super cool little guitar which is fantastic to travel with.

All items ship with tracking. No international orders are accepted. No returns or refunds, by buying this mixer you agree to my terms and have fully inspected the photographs or asked any questions you have to know EXACTLY what you are ordering. If you have any questions feel free to send them my way. Thanks for looking, and happy bidding.