Here’s a solidbody Bartell I purchased in Nov. 2008.  According to Bartell employee Doug Donaghue this model was called the Spyder and is a fairly rare guitar. 

Doug – “The Spyder was a model that was built (for a while) in ’65.  It was a fairly standard solid body without the ‘offset waist’ that Leo Fender popularized in the late 50’s and 60’s (I seem to remember that Leo had a patent on the offset waist design, but I may have that wrong).  It also had a vibrato tailpiece (which, quite frankly, didn’t work all that well).  There were maybe a couple hundred of them built (that I know of) but I don’t know if they sold under the Bartell brand or if they were sold under another brand.”

(at this point Doug hadn’t seen the pictures yet but did confirm the model in a followup email along with more details.)

“Yes, Sir!!  That is definitely the one we called a ‘Spyder’. For all I know, I may have fretted that neck myself <g>  And, by now, I’m sure you’ve found out that the vibrato bar leaves a bit to be desired.  The very first ones had the operating handle mounted even lower on the operating plate (below the high E string) than this one is and about all that they’d do was to change the E and B strings a bit.  The operating plate was just too thin on them and it would flex enough that the low E, A, D, and G strings weren’t effected at all. I seem to remember hearing that they had gone to a thicker operating plate, but I never saw one.  And the pivot itself was a bit ‘stiff’ too, which caused the string(s) not to return to exactly the same pitch each time.”