Mustang - Great Fender, or Greatest Fender? (love thread)

[Will]

I rewired my blue and menstrual tort mustang earlier tonight - now it's back to total stock and strung with 11-50 flatwounds.

Then I jammed on beatles tunes for about an hour - I can't get over how great it is. I can get all the strat sounds, but everything has this compression and sweetness to it that no other fender can touch. Others might have the sweetness, but they don't have that banjo "plonk" that makes the mustang such a great clean sound.

Seriously, this is the best fender. They should shut down the strat line and just make 90,000 different types of mustang like the japanese are doing.

discuss.

[Ninja Mike 808]

Great Fender.

[Armchair Bronco]

I wonder if Fender has any plans to make a "Classic Player Mustang Special HH" edition along the same lines as their Classic Player Jaguar Special HH?

If not, here are my suggestions to Fender:

1. Single coils get replaced with hotter humbuckers.

2. Ditch the Mustang bridge + trem; add a 7.25"-profile Adjusto-Matic bridge (this is Fender's version of Gibson's TOM). To accomodate this, the Mustang trem would have to be redesigned...or dropped altogether in favor of a stoptail.

3. The two switches get replaced with the metalic spinners found on Jaguars. These are coil splitting "blend" controls that let you dial in single coil twang, humbucker beef, or anything in between. There would also be some kind of "click" mode setting at each end of the blend that would disable the respective pup if engaged. So the two switches disappear and are replaced with Jaguar-like blend controls, but from 5 feet away, the classic looks of the Mustang appear unaltered.

4. Everything else on the guitar (scale length, fretboard radius and width @ nut, tuners, nut, volume and tone pots, etc.) remains identical to the '65 reissue.

[tribi9]

If not, here are my suggestions to Fender:

1. Single coils get replaced with hotter humbuckers.

2. Ditch the Mustang bridge + trem; add a 7.25"-profile Adjusto-Matic bridge (this is Fender's version of Gibson's TOM). To accomodate this, the Mustang trem would have to be redesigned...or dropped altogether in favor of a stoptail.

3. The two switches get replaced with the metalic spinners found on Jaguars. These are coil splitting "blend" controls that let you dial in single coil twang, humbucker beef, or anything in between. There would also be some kind of "click" mode setting at each end of the blend that would disable the respective pup if engaged. So the two switches disappear and are replaced with Jaguar-like blend controls, but from 5 feet away, the classic looks of the Mustang appear unaltered.

4. Everything else on the guitar (scale length, fretboard radius and width @ nut, tuners, nut, volume and tone pots, etc.) remains identical to the '65 reissue.

[Ninja Mike 808]

If you get rid of the 2 switches on a mustang, then it's not a mustang anymore, imo

[Armchair Bronco]

But my suggestions are no more radical than the changes that Fender made to the Classic Player Jaguar Special HH.

Basically, I'd like to have a modern version of a "Kurtified" Mustang, but with coil splitters disguised as blend control dials!

And since I've never learned how to properly use a trem, I wouldn't be pissed off if Fender decided to release a version of the Mustang with a TOM-style bridge & stoptail.

For me, the appeal of the Mustang is not so much its tone as it is the combination of its yummy 24" short-scale combined with the freakishly small 7.25" fretboard radius and the tiny 41.3mm width of the neck @ the nut.

Playability reigns supreme, and it's the combination of the numbers above that make the Mustang (and Jaguar) so playable, not a bunch of switches or some single coil pups.

[Will]

The switching is awkward, but no more so then a strat (never been able to quickly get the combo I want) or a tele (hard to get from bridge to anything else due to volume knob proximity).

Fender's switching has always been a little fucked - my vote would go to a regular gibson toggle like Mike is putting on his Duo-Sonic.

I wouldn't want 2 buckers - bridge would be interesting but split sounds still seem too humbucker-like. Of course, I'm either crystal clean or fuzzed out.

[Armchair Bronco]

Yeah, some kind of 3-way switch (either Fender or Gibson style) would work, too, for swapping between neck/neck+bridge/bridge pups.

Then you could ditch of my idea of a blend control with a "click" at each end of the dial.

I'd probably put it in line with the blend controls (kinda like the alignment of the top control panel on a Jag, but without the chrome control plate -- it'd still look like it belongs on a mustang).

[Will]

You could still use the upper switches - just reassigned as phase/series/parallel or control bypasses. I'd just want a straight 3-way similar to the cyclone.

My problem with the fender switches is that you can't move them accurately without using thumb and forefinger, so you have to palm the pick, make the switch, and then regrab the pick. With a gibson switch, I can just slam it with my palm or hook it with my pinky all in one motion.

[James]

I like humbuckers, but if you Mustang type guitars (ie mustans and the hardtail duos and musicmasters) rely on single coils for their charm.#

The best Fender I've played (and by some distance) is the hurb/stewart 64 duo. I'm gutted I wasn't able to put a bid in on it.

[Mike]

I like Mustangs, a lot.

Hurb's/Stewart's Duo-Sonic II and NickD's Mustang are both amazing guitars.

I'm nearing the completion of my Duo Sonic II project but I still get pangs of WANT for the Daphne Blue 65RI. It's just WRONG, kids. BUt I wantit.

[stewart]

strangely, i think the nicest guitar i've ever played was a 1995 butterscotch tele that my friend owned until it got nicked last year. i don't think he'll ever get over it. he was babysitting a '52 RI at one point and i played them both, and i'd say the '95 was better by a smidgeon.

but there's something about the attack of mustang/duo pickups that i love, i'd never be without one.

[Fran]

They are definitely great guitars. The comfort factor is my favourate part, the Mustang is so light with an effortless neck playing one is almost second nature. I'm still in the Jaguar camp though.

[stewart]

strangely, i think the nicest guitar i've ever played was a 1995 butterscotch tele that my friend owned until it got nicked last year.

pardon my crashing hangover, that should have read 'nicest fender guitar'. and you could infer from the whole statement that i've only ever played about a dozen fenders...

[robroe]

MG65 is my #1

[Jagermeister]

The trem is really my favorite thing about the Mustang... Wonderful range and tuning stability. Anyone who wants to get rid of it is effed to the max.

Mustangs rank above Strats and Teles to me (mostly for the trem reason), but the Jaguar/JM are still about 50 feet above it in my mind...

The Mustang's sound doesn't sound as charactered as the Jags to my ears, but it will do a better job of sounder heavier than a Jag when needed.

[bamonte]

See man thats why the japanese are on a higher curve than us.

[Fran]

The Mustang's sound doesn't sound as charactered as the Jags to my ears, but it will do a better job of sounder heavier than a Jag when needed.

I agree. I think the Jag is the least of the bunch to lend itself to heavy music.

[stewart]

Mustangs rank above Strats and Teles to me (mostly for the trem reason), but the Jaguar/JM are still about 50 feet above it in my mind...
.

as we all have to remember though, the jag and jazzmaster were designed as top-of-the-range blah blah and mustangs were pretty low-end. i think it's just testament to fender's late 50's/early 60's designs that they're all lovely guitars.

you don't see many people getting teary eyed over the mid 80s fender scorpion, or whatever the hell it was called.

[James]

you don't see many people getting teary eyed over the mid 80s fender scorpion, or whatever the hell it was called.

Give it 20 years...