I've had a few forum members ask for better pictures of these guitars and James wanted to know the differences between each of them.
So I took a bunch of pictures and will make a post for each one. The fist thing that stands out is that they are not all the same color.
Of course a lot has to do with the way they have faded over time, but in the end I will have pictures inside the control cavities showing the original colors.
I have replaced the bridge pickup on all of them, so I won't get into how they sound (though they are all different).
Last edited by rodvonbon on Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
do what you must, but if people aren't on at least a shoddy dsl/cable (1.5Mbps - 150k) connection in 2008 its their own fault for shoddy page load times
We'll call this guitar 1
It's neck and pickups date from 1968 and the neck plate is 1969, so I call it a '69.
The coolest thing on this one is that it is a factory refinish over LPB. It was a common thing for Fender to respray a body that had a flaw in it's finish. You can see the old color coming through at the forearm and in all the inner routs. The neck on this has F tuners and a basesball bat type back contour that is really beefy feeling.
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edit: I forgot to mention that this one was also savagely routed under the pick guard for humbuckers.
Last edited by rodvonbon on Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
downer wrote:when i showed your orange collection to my girlfriend, she said, you should go to see a doctor
seriously why you have 4 same guitars, sell me one!
They are all different from each other, they just look a lot alike
Next is guitar 2
It is a little more beat up that the first one. The neck, pickups and neck plate are all 1969. It's the first orange guitar I got and someone before me did a butcher job replacing the nut on the neck. I keep meaning to get it fixed, but never seem to find the time. The back has some kind of number faintly written across it in marker. The neck is more to my taste and is not as fat as the first guitar and also has F tuners.
The over all condition almost looks like this this was left outside or in a damp basement.
I was thinking the other day that I can go beyond my current "one es175 type guitar, one solidbody type" restriction and add "one vintage fender" to that list after playing some very nice stuff at doogfest 1 & 2. I spent a fair while daydreaming over the possibilities and while it's certainly a long way into the future (well, a year or two at least) a Comp Orange Mustang tops the current list. I don't even like comp stripes, but they work so well with it. If I was slightly more irresponsible with my money I could see myself going a grand and a half in debt very shortly.
So glad you got the time to get this one together. It's a potential hall of fame thread for sure.
There is deffinatly a certain something that the old guitars have. Me, I'm into the ones made in '69. I like the matching headstocks with white decals, it's a bit of an obsession. And uncontoured bodies arn't as comfortable for me to play.
this orange mustang was on ebay about a month ago and it sold for around about $3300/£1700. now it's back up with a higher BIN. obviously someone's baulked at the price and it's been re-listed. i did almost bid on it at the time (my top price would have been near what it sold for) but i'm glad i didn't. there's no point spending that sort of money just because it's orange. unless you're really rich...
Guitar 3
This is the "prison" guitar and, to me, is a perfect example that an old guitar can't be valued on condition alone. It looks like a mess, but this thing plays fantasticly. It was suposed to have spent it's life in the Florida penal system in the good behaviour room at some prison. Most of the paint is gone, but instead of it being chipped away it is worn smooth. It didn't have the original pickups in it when I bought it and is the only one I have with 2 hotrails. I guess I can't write about this guitar without saying it sounds fucking amazing.
The neck and neck plate are both stamped 1969 and the neck is worn beautifuly. The finish on the neck has a wierd orangie discoloration from all the use and has a thinner countour that guitar 1 & 2. The guy that had it before me is the one who did the pickup swap out and he had the bridge saddles and tuners replaced. When they replaced the tuners they drilled the neck, so I got some conversion furrels and put the F tuners back on. I have the original bridge saddles too, but don't feel like replacing them because the guitar is set up prefectly. The pick guard is new as well, I can't remember who I gave the original to, it's made for a reissue and I just moded it to fit. You can see in the close ups how off it is really.
Actually come to think of it I do have the original pickups that came out of it. They are in a bag with the saddles.
The neck plate shows the engraving from it's long life of hard time.
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Last edited by rodvonbon on Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
stewart wrote:this orange mustang was on ebay about a month ago and it sold for around about $3300/£1700. now it's back up with a higher BIN. obviously someone's baulked at the price and it's been re-listed. i did almost bid on it at the time (my top price would have been near what it sold for) but i'm glad i didn't. there's no point spending that sort of money just because it's orange. unless you're really rich...
That's way too much. The most I ever considered spending was $2,400 for a mint '69 and still couldn't bring myself to do it.
Plus nonmatching headstock = don't want
rodvonbon wrote:We'll call this guitar 1
It's neck and pickups date from 1968 and the neck plate is 1969, so I call it a '69.
The coolest thing on this one is that it is a factory refinish over LPB. It was a common thing for Fender to respray a body that had a flaw in it's finish. You can see the old color coming through at the forearm and in all the inner routs. The neck on this has F tuners and a basesball bat type back contour that is really beefy feeling.
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edit: I forgot to mention that this one was also savagely routed under the pick guard for humbuckers.
Holy fucking shit. If it didn't have that ugly (upside down) humbucker in it, this guitar would be so perfect.
Here we have guitar 4
It's a reissue of the previous three. I'm not a big fan of the reissues, but I am quite taken with this one. It's got a standard '69 reissue body finished in Capri orange which is a little more orange than the originals. The neck is closer to the baseball bat contour than the other '69 reissue I have. The headstock is matching with a black and gold custom contour decal (yuck) and sports kluson white tuners. I replaced the horrid white pearl pickguard with a plain white one. It still has a factory set up and the action is a little high. I shim the necks on my guitars 1 or 2 degrees and use .09s to get low easy action. I need to get around to doing that for this one. Over all the build quality seems some what better on this guitar than other reissues I've played. I don't know what it is about it, though it may be psychological, who knows.
Ok now we'll talk about the actual color ORANGE
There is a pretty big difference between each guitars original color. Guitar 1 is more of a bright mustard yellow, guitar 2 is kind of a dark mustard yellow and guitar 3 is bright orange.
There has been a lot of research on Fenders guitar colors, but there is no info on orange. I don't think Fender used any one particular color when spraying these and knowing how Fender operated it seems they just used what ever was available or didn't care that the color varied so much.
The pictures didn't capture the colors very well, but I tried to compare them best I could.
Guitar 1
Guitar 2
Guitar 3
Guitar 1 next to guitar 2
Guitar 3 next to guitar 2
Guitar 3 next to guitar 4
And for shits and giggles guitar 3 taken apart
I think the last guitar is closer to what I think of as orange and the first two look yellow to me.
