2000s Morgan Monroe MMV-5 Mini Guitar

This import guitar is about the same size as a Taylor GS Mini with a squashed "parlor-size" body and short, size-5-ish 22 1/2" scale length. I'm posting this as sort-of a "review" as I adjusted it for a customer.

It's not a bad instrument at all, though tone-wise it's fairly bland compared to something like a GS Mini or a Martin 5-18 (as you step up the ladder). It has that boxy-but-comfortable sound that makes a great couch-potato companion for parsing chords.

The body is laminate but it has a solid spruce top and a faded "vintage-style sunburst" look. It blows the retro-30s vibe, however, with the wood-bound fretboard and modernistic bridge.

The owner cleansed the headstock, apparently, of its low-brow parentage. The tuners, amazingly, are 18:1 Grover Sta-Tites which surprised me. Those are nice units.

With such a short scale (22 1/2"), regular 54w-12 lights even feel slack and ho-hum. These really need mediums (that's what's on this) to sound good in standard E-E tuning.

Intonation is often an issue at this scale length for an E-to-E guitar. You can see that I've cut the saddle slot a little wider and added a shim to knock the saddle between 1/32" and 1/16" or so to the rear to get it to play in tune up the neck. The stepped "deck" of the bridge is actually a nice idea to allow the strings a good break-angle on the saddle.