This landed yesterday. I'm really impressed with it. It's quite heavy, just a tad more than my Tele, but I think that's good thing on a small bodied guitar. The neck is great. The whole thing hums in a pleasing way. Also, the pickups are excellent. I would never be able to tell you it was a Squier without looking. Very impressive
The laurel fingerboard is a bit ashy looking, I hope to remedy this with some sort of oil or wax. I haven't had much luck in the past with that though. Also it is more of a custard colour than aged white in real life. I think a white/ish pickguard will help deceive the eyes into thinking it is more of an off-white
Anyway I plan to turn this into a fire breathing drop tuned beast. I thought it would be a fun thing to do on this style of guitar. I will no doubt have some questions about wiring when the time comes. Maybe pickup selection - DiMarzio have a decent range of of single sized high output humbuckers that I am interested in
Comments
Pre-CBS pickguard convention was white on dark opaque colours and tort on light opaque colours.
CBS overturned convention with their black/white/black 'guards but this did look pretty good on black Mustang and Musicmaster guitars.
Unless you block the vibrato bridge and tailpiece, Drop Tunings (in the correct sense of the term) will upset the guitar's tuning stability.
I, for one, would not expect a budget recreation of the Fender Dynamic Vibrato to cope.
Check out the YouTube videos of Mike "Puisheen" Adams for helpful Mustang and Jag-Stang set-up tips.
For the electronics, I think this will be possible, I'd like the front slider to be a pickup selector and the back slider to be a series/parallel/split for the bridge humbucker. I think I'll need ON-ON-ON switches for that. I'll try the stock bridge pickup in the neck position to start. I'll probably wire it out of phase
I'm not concerned with vintage accuracy really. I want to put a decal on it somewhere. It'll probably take a while to get everything done with the other bits and bobs I'm doing
H7 has a Fender Musicmaster guitar that he occasionally considers selling.
But not at the moment.
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Lovely guitar for the money, but I would upgrade to modern tuners. That's just me. The pickguard cracked fairly easily too, and the switches didn't work after a month. Well one of the switches. All easy fixes though.
I have GAS for another one now. Lovely guitar to play. Nice and light, and comfortable.
When I did take it apart, I was going to use the neck for a Squier Jaguar body, but it didn't fit the neck pocket. Not sure if that's normal with Squiers in that they have random measurements!
I have seen one with a 24" aluminium neck. Must be neck dive city!
You could also put in a hardtail conversion plate, or upgrade the springs in the tremolo. Have you seen this video (several videos, here's part 1):
The tuners do feel gross so I'll probably change them. And the switches are pretty crappy feeling, too
I will probably end up changing the pots and the jack as well. I want a 500k pot for the bridge humbucker and I'll use a fixed resistor to lower that to 250k for the single coil in the neck
Someone on eBay is selling Mustang pickguards to fit fit Squier CV. Not cheap but I'll probably do that
It is a nice guitar though. If I thought it was crap I would have returned it. Really nice to play unplugged and the plugged in sound is great, too
This is why people say they're good "for the money" I suppose!
I was supposed to be going to London tonight but I didn't know about the train strike so I've had to stay at home. I had a first little peak under the hood of the Mustang and learnt how the trem works
First thing I did was replace the grub screws in the bridge. They are M3 3mm x 14mm cone point hex screws if anyone is looking for them. I got some stainless steel ones. I wrapped them in plumber's tape to stop them from shifting around. I have more confidence in these not stripping or getting stuck
I had a little look under the pickguard to see what horror awaits and also to measure the distance between the mounting screws on the switches. I am pleasantly surprised by the neatness of the wiring. It's much better than my Vintera 50's Modified Tele which is a complete rat's nest
I actually like the look of the laurel when it has wax and oil on it. It's quite a busy grain pattern which I find pleasing
The wood has split around this pickguard hole. I might squirt some glue into it but I don't know how you would clamp this. There are plenty of screws for the pickguard anyway so it doesn't really matter:
I got this decal for it but I'm not pleased with the quality. It's a low res image that's been blown up. You can't really tell in the photo but it's obvious when you look at it up close. I'm going to send it back and look for a better one:
The tremolo is working well but there is a bit of a knock and a bump in the travel. I'm not sure if this is:
- Inherent to the design
- A setup issue
- Poor quality hardware
Does anyone know? I've put some nut sauce in the fulcrum. I don't know if it will do anything but it probably won't hurtCool thanks. I've got a Dimarzio Tone Zone S coming. Going to try that in the bridge with the stock bridge pup in the neck
Spotted some 35.7mm switches at AxesRUs so I'll get a couple with white sliders and solder them up fresh instead of desoldering the factory ones. Easier to reverse too if I ever decide to
If you can't get a clamp over to the edge of the body you could maybe wedge something in to the cavity against it? Or even use a small screw to pull it together, maybe remove it after if it gets in the way of the pickgaurd screw or just leave if it doesn't.
Or if you use superglue you could probably just push it together yourself.
It would need to be strong though or it will just split again, especially if you pack the hole to stop the pg screw spinning.
Just ideas.
Looking good!
I'm a few coats of wax in, seems to be taking:
This thing will just about fit. I decided to keep it since the colours match so well. I will keep the pickguard for this reason too:
I've got a Tone Zone S coming with an aged white cover, also alpha pots and new slider switches with white tips. Gonna do it with cloth braided wire like a stupid hipster
Pickups should really come with wire
I'll do a couple of light coats of clear coat once it's fully dried