Squier Mini Player: Making Sense

I’ll admit, I’m not an avid guitar player. My instrument of choice has always been percussion. Whether it’s slapping my legs to some rhythm in-between my ears or pounding on a djembe or a doumbek or a bodhrán, that’s my first musical love. Heck, I even have an O.G. Roland electronic drum set still sitting in a box after, I don’t know, 9 or 10 years?

Finishing the job

In many ways, this is a continuation (culmination?) of the Randy Destroys Things from last year, when I tore into the Squier Mini Player.Today, I got a bug up my behind, dug out the old amp board, and literally tore it down to the bare PCB. Or as near as matters.

Yup, all torn down. Even tore out some traces on the other side.

But it wasn’t all for naught: I spent the day also painstakingly tracing all of the circuits on this board to give you (drumroll) a PDF of the schematic, as well as the KiCAD .SCH file (once I figure a good place to host it).

Randy Destroys Things: Squier Mini Player w/ Built-In Amp

It’s not often I get permission to take stuff apart. More precisely, I spend a lot of time doing creative stuff, so my purely destructive side rarely gets its time in the sun to frolic and cavort and otherwise express itself in all it’s entropic glory. Today, however, is different.

But first, a story

A tidy little instrument from the front.

On a recent trip south to the desert to visit the family (something of a do-over for Christmas, since we were all sick as dogs over the holiday and didn’t see anyone other than ourselves), my brother-in-law gifted our family a used Squier Mini Player Strat with a built-in amplifier and speaker. This thing is a true piece of guitar oddity, and pretty freaking rare apparently. It’s a “mini,” which apparently means it has a 3/4 size neck, even though the body is the same size. Usually Stratocaster-style electrics have three pickups and a selector switch, along with a couple of tone knobs and a volume, but not this one. Because of the speaker, there’s really only room for a single humbucking pickup, one tone knob, and the volume. Of note is despite the somewhat toylike look of the body with the speaker grille, there’s really nothing toy about this; it’s a real instrument.