GrassRoots G-LPC-Mini 2022 - Black (Mini Les Paul)

I am selling this Grassroots mini guitar with 521mm scale. I bought it second hand and imported from Japan via Zenmarket in 2023. I am selling it because I have other mini guitars, and this one stays unplayed.

Grassroots is the low budget brand under the ESP umbrella, made in China and available only for Japan market. Think of it like the equivalent of LTD in the other markets.

The guitar looks very similar to a full scale guitar, and also feels like it, extremely similar in design as the bigger counterparts, besides being smaller of course. It has a set neck, and multiply binding. It doesn’t feel like a toy, you don’t feel like something is missing, besides the first 3 frets. It stays in tune quite well, it doesn’t go out of tune while playing, but it is a bit sensible to temperature changes. I managed to set it up nicely, and the strings are very low, without fret buzz.

The neck pickup is not a pickup, but a speaker. Can be pretty loud for a normal living room, but you won’t use it for a concert. For couch or playing songs for/with your small children, it’s perfect. No cable to connect, no external amp to turn on, not even a wireless system. It’s all in there, you pull the pot and the guitar is ready. It uses a 9V battery (I use rechargeable ones, they last about one week) and it’s amplified by a very common LM386 board (200x version). Over the years the capacitors on it can deteriorate, but this part is only a few euros and easy to replace. There is also a pot on the board itself, so you can set up the maximum volume. 



This guitar is also modded by me, I added an extra 3.5mm jack input on its backplate. It connects directly to the amp + speaker, and when something is plugged in, the signal from the pickup is not transmitted anymore to the speaker. It’s basically a battery powered speaker. I use it in combination with headphone amps, and route the output from it to the speaker. In this way, I have multi effects available. For high gain stuff you enter quickly in feedback, but it’s still usable.


When I bought the guitar, there was a strong smell coming out of the fretboard, like of cigarettes. It’s still there after 3 years, but really faint. I had to adjust the nut height a little bit, then I could make the action quite low. Unfortunately I filed it a bit too much, and right now I improvised a bit, there is a small piece of paper under the nut. In the 2 years which I played it, it didn’t move or caused me any issues. On the backplate there is a small chip at the edge, from my early modding experiments. The input jack plate is also a bit melted.

Comes without the battery, but with a fitting gig bag.