ShortScale.org

After falling in love with my fiesta red Jag-stang again (in no small part down to the 60's vibrato I stuck on it) I had to get another...

I missed out on a bargain on Gumtree (£300!) so I decided to message those that didn't sell on ebay to see if they were interested in a trade. So I get a reply and ended up trading my (virtually identical) '69RI Mustang for this last week:





A '96 in sonic blue (though his ad said a '95 I don't think they had the 50th anniversary sticker on them), so now I have a twin for my fiesta red! It came with some locking tuners (not sure I'm too keen on them) but it's not going to remain stock for long anyway. I've already ordered a Pat Pend vibrato for it (which will hopefully be as nice as the other 60's unit), once that's arrived I'll get a Staytrem arm to bring it in line with the fiesta playing wise. Then finally upgrading the electronics: CTS pots, Switchcraft on-off-on switches and some new pickups...

The neck pickups are either going to remain stock (they're pretty close to a Mustang pickup anyway) or I'm going to stick a Creamery "Red '79" Mustang pickup in there, haven't quite decided yet, so for now they'll stay stock.

For the bridge pickup I originally intended to get another pickguard cut for single coils (just like the fiesta) but the positioning just doesn't look right. So I decided to get me one of these Oil City BrassKnuckle. It's essentially two single coils slapped together and should sound similar in vein to a Wide-Range when used as a full humbucker.

The plan is to add a push/pull for coil splitting and wire it up so that normally (i.e. down) it will be split and using the rear coil, which should then pretty much be in regular position a Mustang bridge pickup would be (plus I'll have a 12k humbucker when needed). Then the slide switches will be used as a pickup selector and for parallel/series/phase switching.

Just need to find a cheap enough tort pickguard for the fiesta and some plastic no-hole humbucker covers, one black (so the blue one has the pearly pickguard and black covers/switches) and one white (so the fiesta is tort with white covers/switches).

Lovely guitar. I am definitely a Jag-Stang fan.

Definitely a sexy pair. Congrats on the new gal.

Nice, i used to have the pair. They was the cheapest offset Fender you could pick up in the UK second hand, not anymore.

I played a fiesta red JS for the first time earlier this week at the local Guitar Center. I liked the neck pup, hated the bridge pup. I'm not used to the 24" scale so it felt weird. For some reason I find the reissue Mustang necks easier to play on. It was terribly set up and some of the upper frets were scratchy. It could be a good guitar with a new bridge pickup and (obviously) a correct set up. The most ridiculous part was that GC was charging $700 for it. I'd pay $500 max.

Fran wrote:They was the cheapest offset Fender you could pick up in the UK second hand, not anymore.

I've managed to pay under the odds on both of them luckily. The red one I think I paid something like £250 (but that was around 3 years ago) and the blue one probably has about £350 in it (paid about £230 for the Mustang I traded and gave the guy £120 on top) but you're right, most of the asking prices on them are way high.

moore65 wrote:I played a fiesta red JS for the first time earlier this week at the local Guitar Center. I liked the neck pup, hated the bridge pup. I'm not used to the 24" scale so it felt weird. For some reason I find the reissue Mustang necks easier to play on. It was terribly set up and some of the upper frets were scratchy. It could be a good guitar with a new bridge pickup and (obviously) a correct set up. The most ridiculous part was that GC was charging $700 for it. I'd pay $500 max.

Yeah the neck pickups on them are rather good. I'm thinking I probably wont bother to replace them. This is the first time I've had any time with the stock bridge pickup, the red one came with a Duncan JB already in there and yeah, they're not great. The reissue Mustangs have much thicker necks (may even be wider at the nut?), I just clicked with the JS necks... I never get cramp in my hand playing them.