My first shortscale.
Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 6:50 pm
Today I collected the Mustang I bought on ebay on Sunday. I had a bit of a play with it on the train home, and decided to get it apart as soon as I got in for a couple of reasons. I was anxious to see dates and what was going on under the pickguard, but mostly because the guy who sold it was a Mustang noob. The strings were coming straight through the tailpiece so there was the tiniest break angle over the bridge. The high and low e strings having the lowest saddles would pop out of the groove as soon as you touched the string. He also hadn't used the hole in the centre of the klusons and had use them like the other type with just a horizontal hole. You could lift the string off the peg with your fingers because of it.
I took everything apart except the tuners and strap buttons. Disassembling the bridge was a bit of a bastard with the little springs but everything else went smoothly. I found out the bridge is actually a proper vintage one rather than a comp stang one. Just the bridge cover is from a comp stang and the rest is from 64-67. The neck is Dec 63, A width and 22.5". So the smallest of the small. It plays very nicely though, I'd actually say it's quite similar to hurbs duo with a less wear andmore gloss on the back. In terms of wear it's probably on par with Fran's 64 jag.
The guy gave me a small bag of parts including a new switchcraft mustang switch, two spare mustang knobs and two white strat tone knobs. It also had some screws which seem to be for most of the basic things (spare neck and bridge screws, that sort of thing) and the leftover cloth wire he had which was quite a bit. There was also one black robroe cover which came with one of the pickups so I'm assuming the pickups are mustang ones. All I know so far is that they're fender and 70s. I have some numbers from the back of them and will look into it shortly. At the moment I have two strat covers on them, but I photoshopped robroes onto the last imagine and it'll have robroes as soon as they arrive from doog.
The pots are modern CTS jobs. The tone pot is a TBX thig with some sort of push/pull action. So far, I'm not a fan and I'm tempted to replace the lot.
I put 13s towards the end of the pics, and with the wraparound the bridge the trem works perfectly. Lot's of travel in both direction. It is hyper sensitive but I'm assuming that's the nature of the beast. The reason it was borked before was the guy threading the strings straight through. I imagine that saved me a few quid in the auction though. The refin isn't the best job, and to draw a comparison again it's probably slightly worse than the duo. It doesn't look too bad overall but it's far from a pro job and when the money is flowing a little more freely i'll probably refinish it more of a vintage white.
I think it's far to say that the price I paid is a bit of a joke. It's easily a £600 guitar if not more.
And on to the pics. Im going to stick them under a spoiler tag just to save the scroll button on the first page. I think all of the pics will be click to enlarge types. If you only enlarge a couple make it the front of the headstock and the last pic. I've just realised there are no pics of the back of the body and no pics of the whole guitar. I'll take a new batch on a sunnier day once I have the new pickup covers on.
I took everything apart except the tuners and strap buttons. Disassembling the bridge was a bit of a bastard with the little springs but everything else went smoothly. I found out the bridge is actually a proper vintage one rather than a comp stang one. Just the bridge cover is from a comp stang and the rest is from 64-67. The neck is Dec 63, A width and 22.5". So the smallest of the small. It plays very nicely though, I'd actually say it's quite similar to hurbs duo with a less wear andmore gloss on the back. In terms of wear it's probably on par with Fran's 64 jag.
The guy gave me a small bag of parts including a new switchcraft mustang switch, two spare mustang knobs and two white strat tone knobs. It also had some screws which seem to be for most of the basic things (spare neck and bridge screws, that sort of thing) and the leftover cloth wire he had which was quite a bit. There was also one black robroe cover which came with one of the pickups so I'm assuming the pickups are mustang ones. All I know so far is that they're fender and 70s. I have some numbers from the back of them and will look into it shortly. At the moment I have two strat covers on them, but I photoshopped robroes onto the last imagine and it'll have robroes as soon as they arrive from doog.
The pots are modern CTS jobs. The tone pot is a TBX thig with some sort of push/pull action. So far, I'm not a fan and I'm tempted to replace the lot.
I put 13s towards the end of the pics, and with the wraparound the bridge the trem works perfectly. Lot's of travel in both direction. It is hyper sensitive but I'm assuming that's the nature of the beast. The reason it was borked before was the guy threading the strings straight through. I imagine that saved me a few quid in the auction though. The refin isn't the best job, and to draw a comparison again it's probably slightly worse than the duo. It doesn't look too bad overall but it's far from a pro job and when the money is flowing a little more freely i'll probably refinish it more of a vintage white.
I think it's far to say that the price I paid is a bit of a joke. It's easily a £600 guitar if not more.
And on to the pics. Im going to stick them under a spoiler tag just to save the scroll button on the first page. I think all of the pics will be click to enlarge types. If you only enlarge a couple make it the front of the headstock and the last pic. I've just realised there are no pics of the back of the body and no pics of the whole guitar. I'll take a new batch on a sunnier day once I have the new pickup covers on.
► Show Spoiler
