Any Fender Mustang lovers.....

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FrankieabbotFrankieabbot Frets: 96
edited November 2015 in Bass
....out there? Have just seen one on the bay going for 900 sovs. I have fond memories of the one I bought around 1977. Someone tipped me off that Fender did a shorter scale bass.....other regular basses at the time were difficult for me to play cos of my diddy fingers! I had to get a shop in Newcastle on Tyne to order one in (we weren't inundated with decent guitar places in the north east in those days). Even thought that I made a bit of a killing by getting a price reduction for 'cash'. If memory serves me right I got it for £110. Ten notes knocked off but it was prolly overpriced to start with! I loved it. It played great. What on earth possessed me to trade it in for a Yamaha with 'active electrics' later in life!! The longer length killed me. Great memories of my black little horse though.
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Comments

  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71963
    Yes, love them. Alan Lancaster used one, so they're a big part of my musical childhood :). He was still using it on the 'Frantic Four' reunion tour a couple of years back… of course he is only about 5 foot tall so the small size is probably an advantage.

    I had a great '73 in candy apple red with competition stripe many years ago - I stupidly traded it away for a Jazz at some point. To be fair, it did have one problem - the lowest notes on the E string were somehow 'indistinct' - almost to the point it was hard to tell the pitch sometimes (particularly F and F#). I now think that was crap strings rather than an inherent problem with the scale length.

    I'd maybe like another one but I've tried the Japanese reissues and they're not at all the same unfortunately - they sound and feel thin and cheap. Originals are starting to get too expensive for what would always be a second bass for me now I have my Rick.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • FrankieabbotFrankieabbot Frets: 96
    edited November 2015
    ICBM said:
    Yes, love them. Alan Lancaster used one, so they're a big part of my musical childhood :). He was still using it on the 'Frantic Four' reunion tour a couple of years back… of course he is only about 5 foot tall so the small size is probably an advantage.

    I had a great '73 in candy apple red with competition stripe many years ago - I stupidly traded it away for a Jazz at some point. To be fair, it did have one problem - the lowest notes on the E string were somehow 'indistinct' - almost to the point it was hard to tell the pitch sometimes (particularly F and F#). I now think that was crap strings rather than an inherent problem with the scale length.

    I'd maybe like another one but I've tried the Japanese reissues and they're not at all the same unfortunately - they sound and feel thin and cheap. Originals are starting to get too expensive for what would always be a second bass for me now I have my Rick.
    Now you mention it, I also found some of the notes on the E string to be a bit 'wooly'. I messed with string height and pickup height all to no avail. Didn't it have a low tech string damper system? Mine, when new, had a strip of rubber about half an inch thick laid on top of some moveable tab like thingys just before where the strings met the moveable bridges! I thought that the rubber must have been packing material so removed it! Thinking that it would affect the strings intonation. (At the time I didn't really know the concept of string length as being part of intonation.....I just referred to it as 'a bit of a bug**r to tune). Maybe a decent pedal would have made it sound punchier? Happy, albeit naïve, memories.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71963
    On mine the foam had long since perished and crumbled away. Yes, they do affect the intonation as well as damping the strings - it's an inherent flaw with the idea. You have to adjust them very precisely so they just touch the string and don't actually try to shorten the sounding length. The one on my Rick is similar - I never use it.

    I'm just hoping my daughter will take up bass instead of guitar and piano, and then I have an excuse to buy a lightweight, thin-bodied short-scale bass again :).

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    edited November 2015
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • paulnb57 said:
    Looks good. Mine had the two little black offset pickups. Looked like those liqourice Bassett sweets!
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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    paulnb57 said:
    Looks good. Mine had the two little black offset pickups. Looked like those liqourice Bassett sweets!
    Wish I had the quids!......
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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