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Italia Mondial

 

Italia Mondial reviewed by The Man in the Jar

I am so pleased to see these ultra-cool guitars becoming more widely available in the UK.

Features of the Italia Mondial

Tuners - The sealed mini-tuners with large kidney knobs are branded with an stylised Italia "I". They worked so beautifully that I have no reason to suppose they aren't branded Wilkinson tuners.

Headstock - The simple three-a-side headstock is reminiscent of a Rickenbacker style. The Italia logo sits proud on an embossed plaque.

Nut - The black graphite nut abuts the fretboard and is tidily finished. 

Neck - The maple neck, in common with other Italia models, has a Les Paul feel about it. There's a nice solid presence in the hand with a satisfying feeling of width across the fretboard which will feel like home to Gibson users. The neck is covered in the same shiny black lacquer as the body, giving a smooth playing experience. Although it's a bolt-on neck there's only one visible screw in a very small backplate, which might cause you some worry. However the screw you can see simply holds on the plate. The plate covers two machine screws that enter threaded metal receptacles set into the heel of the neck. This is at least as strong if not stronger than the traditional four-screw fixing method.   

Fretboard - The rosewood of the fretboard is absolutely scrumptious and the feeling of luxurious quality is enhanced by the fretmarkers. These are Gibbo-style block inlays of pearloid topped with dots of rainbow abalone. Very beautiful.

Frets - The fat frets are extremely well-polished and present you with an almost irresistible surface to over-bend and trill every other note. These frets finish off an extremely playable neck. The short scale allows for heavier stringing for added tone without losing ease of play.      

Action - Good from the box but you might be tempted to tweak a bit lower.

Body - It's not immediately obvious from the picture but this Les Paul-style body is semi-hollow with an f-hole on the upper part of the face. But it's a bit more complex than it at first seems. The back of the body is made from agathis wood. Onto this is fused a top of what Italia call Acousti-Glass. This material has the feel of flexible bakelite and the whole construction gives the guitar a very airy un-amplified tone. Between the two materials running around the outside edge is a strip of black rubber. This serves to make the guitar very stable on your thigh when playing in the sitting position. The top has a nice contoured detail running around the edge and the back edge is nicely rounded for comfort. The construction is very light to wear but remains nicely balanced.

Bridge - This is a JazzBox style of bridge. A simple wooden bridge sits on two supports that are adjustable for string height. Individual very simple saddles sit in one of four slots cut the length of the bridge. The choice of slot in which the saddle sits informs the intonation for that string. Behind the bridge is an Italia branded trapeze that supports a stop-tail block with holes through which the strings are threaded. The block is slanted to provide optimum tension over the bridge for the different strings.

Pickups - Again the Mondial shows a degree of complexity unusual in guitars of this price range. In addition to two Wilkinson humbuckers the Mondial has a piezo pickup under the bridge.

Controls - On the lower part of the pickguard are three knobs and a three-way pickup selector. One knob is the Master Volume for the two humbuckers and another is the Master Tone for these pickups. The rearmost knob is the Volume control for the piezo. On the upper bout there are two more knobs marked Tone. These are centre-indented EQ controls for the piezo and are driven by a 9 volt battery that lives in a snug little compartment on the back of the body.

Pickguard - What looks like the pickguard on this instrument is actually a raised section of the Acousti-Glass that's finished in an antiqued white. This raised the question of how one accesses the electrics in the event of failure. A quick phone call to the distributor and... Apparently the rubber grommet around the edge of the guitar is removable and reveals a number of small screws. When these and the screws holding the jackplug plate are removed, your guitar comes apart like a sandwich to reveal its tasty filling. The real pickguard is a very small three-ply black-white-black teardrop affair that sits between and below the pickups. Most of this is filled with a raised metal badge that spells the model name Mondial in a quirky cartoon font. Although this looks like it might get in the way of important business it actually isn't intrusive at all.

Strap-buttons - There are two nice large strap buttons, one on the bottom of the body forming part of the trapeze termination and one on the back of the body behind the upper horn. This causes the guitar to fall into a very natural and comfortable position on the strap when standing.

Output Jack - There are two, both in the lower edge of the body, one for the humbucker output and one for the piezo output. These both sit in a long oblong chrome mounting plate and are marked only by stickers. These stickers will fall off the first time they encounter sweat so you'll need to learn which is which quite quickly.

Finish - Very good throughout.

 

Sound of the Italia Mondial

Trevor Wilkinson's humbuckers have a nice medium vintage-style output that really suits the Italia style and sits particularly well on the chambered body of the Mondial. Blues, jazz and crunchy-edged rock all fall easily from this guitar. But perhaps the best voices can be found in the smokier blues direction where the neck pickup broods nicely but benefits from the tonal lift provided by the maple and agathis construction. Wind down the humbuckers to zero and wind up the piezo and suddenly you are holding a totally different beast. I dropped a touch of compression and a twist of reverb onto the basic piezo sound and discovered a very satisfying acoustic performance sound that could equally well be used for direct inject recording purposes. The sweep of the two centre-indented EQ's is very wide and there lies a vast range of tonal variation to explore.

Now use the humbucker volume to blend back the humbuckers and, quite frankly, the sky becomes the limit. 

 

Overall Impressions of the Italia Mondial

I simply love this guitar. For the job of blues, jazz or pop the Wilkinson voice on a semi-hollow body will take some beating. The Mondial had me at the first hello. Add to that a superb acoustic piezo voice and the sub-£400 price tag begins to look like a real bargain. If you're a one person act singing in pubs and bars the versatility of this guitar will transform your gigging experience. Feed the humbuckers to your combo and the piezo to your PA and you've got two guitars in action without ever getting off your stool. It's a shame that there isn't a three-way micro switch to choose between piezo, humbuckers or both to make switching mid-song less of a pain. But that and the less-than-easy access to the electrics are the only niggles I can find. This is an excellent guitar with a level of versatility that belies the price-tag. As they say down Italia way, Cooler than Cool!  

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