my mustang arrived

exhausted

what a fun little guitar. just tiny and featherweight. low output. i can see why so many people beef the pickups up. i'm leaving mine stock. i quite like the bridge pickup on it's own which surprised me.

just needs thicker strings, a set up and new control wiring/pots/jack and it's ready to go.

love the sunburst and probably won't run into many lefty sunbursts. this was the first i'd seen besides one vintage one on ebay a while back.

of course, as with most fender japan lefties i get screwed on the headstock labelling.

i think the neck grain and tint on my son's righty is nicer but the build quality of both is top notch.

http://brehell.ca/greg/pics/mustangs.jpg

xtremehardy388

CONGRATS!!!! Mustangs are GREAT! Let me know all you do to it because I am thinking about working on mine.

elstongunn

beautiful, been curious to play one of those, and a jazzmaster:)

exhausted

from ishibashi

It is a left-hand model of the mustang of the specification for 69 years.
Because the body that gave the elbow cutting to the body contour often fits the body, and is steady, it excels in Prayabiriti.

Pacomc79

oh ex had a homemade jazzbastard once too.

Very nice looking mustang Greg. It's probably cool to play with low output stuff too actually, I bet it works out nice with fuzzes.

exhausted

actually, yeah, it's really nice with the little big muff. i usually set that that pedal with the gain almost zero'ed so to have a really low output guitar feed it makes it even more dynamic. lots of fun.

my jazzbastard was such a strange guitar but was pretty much strat like in feel because of the bridge being strat-type.

i still want a jag and a jazz some day. with fender USA apparently cracking down on retailers exporting new fender japan guitars that may get tougher.

i'm going to just keep watching the seller i bought this from. he's in new york and seems to have lots of cool CIJ stuff. and the prices are outstanding compared to, say, southpawguitars.com that try to get $1200 for a mustang for instance.

Pacomc79

That's interesting, I find a lot of cool stuff like that coming out of NYC too.

I'll be there in a week, the girlfriend wants to see rockafeller center and the Christmas tree.....all I want too do is go to guitar shops.

The things that annoy me about huge retailers like Fender is just this kind of deal. They build very nice guitars in Japan, at reasonable prices but because they compete with low end US and High End Mexico we can't get them and that's crap.

Pacomc79

exhausted wrote:

from ishibashi

I love guitars with great Prayabiriti

moster78

Pacomc79 wrote:

That's interesting, I find a lot of cool stuff like that coming out of NYC too.

I'll be there in a week, the girlfriend wants to see rockafeller center and the Christmas tree.....all I want too do is go to guitar shops.

Check out Rudy's Music Stop at 169 West 48th Street.

http://www.rudysmusic.com

Pacomc79

Oh yeah I'm definately going to Rudy's and 33rd st Guitars.

Thanks, Mo.

xtremehardy388

I have always wanted to try the Jag-stang. Any opinions?

Pacomc79

xtremehardy388 wrote:

I have always wanted to try the Jag-stang. Any opinions?

Some like it, I always considered it the worst of both worlds. It was more of a cash grab than a really decent guitar. I don't think kurt even liked it. It needed about 5 to 10 years more production refinement. The concept is great, the finished product just needed some work.

keeponrockin

xtremehardy388 wrote:

I have always wanted to try the Jag-stang. Any opinions?

I actually like it. Would I buy one? No, but I thought it was a good guitar.

xtremehardy388

What is the difference between it and the Mustang? I have a mustang so I don't want to get somthing that is basically the same

keeponrockin

Jagstang has a humbucker, and a different body.

exhausted

xtremehardy388 wrote:

What is the difference between it and the Mustang? I have a mustang so I don't want to get somthing that is basically the same

a higher output neck single coil. a bridge humbucker. the body has no contours.

i sort of want one just as a kurt fan but the guitar was never finished. didn't have the right pickups. didn't have the tuneomatic bridge etc. kurt preferred his modded mustangs by all accounts.

exhausted

here's what i've done so far today. big improvements i think. i got a lot of ideas from jag-stang.com.

setup:
*wrapped bridge posts with tape to stabilize the bridge position. since it floats normally, it easily comes out of tune and is impossible to intonate properly. takes away some vibrato bar functionality but i don't intend to use it anyway. i'm more interested in having the guitar tuning stable.
*flipped the bridge such that the screws to adjust the saddles face the pickups. now i can actually access the screws and intonate the guitar.
*lowered the tail piece closer to the body, increasing the break angle over the bridge for more tension.
*12-52 (heavy) strings, adjust truss rod, intonate.
*adjusted pickup heights to taste. coupled with the heavy strings, the output is increased somewhat but still pretty low. i just turn on my compressor.

electronics:
*reversed pot lugs to make them turn "right-handed". that's a left-handed problem. fender wires left-handed but uses right-hand taper pots, making the tone control useless.
*replaced .047 tone capacitor with a .022 orange drop. the 47 is too dark. using a 22 makes the tone control more subtle over the range of the pot. i am using the tone control to roll off highs on the bridge pickup so i wanted a good tone control.
*grounded the input jack and all pots together. don't know if it made a difference but it's good practice i think.

thinking of the following:
*new CTS pots including my usual linear volume pot for better volume control. requires drilling the control plate because the stock pot shafts are small. so i'm hestitant to do it. if i gibble that control plate it will be hard to find another.
*duncan antiquities along with all new cloth wiring throughout (not for a while)
*converting one slider switch to a pure 3-way pickup selector. converting the other slider to be a capacitor selector for the bridge pickup. say, off/.01/.02. and still having the master tone available to both pickups too. the bridge pickup sounds great overdriven with some highs rolled off. it would be nice to have some different caps on a switch and leave the neck pickup full throttle. i'd lose the parallel out of phase sound but it's not a very good sound anyway.

xtremehardy388

setup:
*wrapped bridge posts with tape to stabilize the bridge position. since it floats normally, it easily comes out of tune and is impossible to intonate properly. takes away some vibrato bar functionality but i don't intend to use it anyway. i'm more interested in having the guitar tuning stable.

All right, How did you do that? I'm very interested in that and pictures would help too. Thanks a lot for all the updates by the way, I appreciate it.

All Those Yesterdays

Looks good, Do they make a fixed bridge version of those? That's what needs to happen (in my mind), can't stand that set up they have. How about a Tortoise pickguard for it? That could be cool.

You know what would be interesting is a bigsby on one. Now that's what I'm talking about.

exhausted

All Those Yesterdays wrote:

Looks good, Do they make a fixed bridge version of those? That's what needs to happen (in my mind), can't stand that set up they have. How about a Tortoise pickguard for it? That could be cool.

You know what would be interesting is a bigsby on one. Now that's what I'm talking about.

duosonics were pretty much the same but had a fixed bridge. they never reissued it though. correction: there were mexican reissues some time in the 90s.

the tortoise guard did come on some of the sunburst ones that i've seen. but this one, with the pearloid, is the same as the early 70s righty i used to own.

exhausted

xtremehardy388 wrote:

setup:
*wrapped bridge posts with tape to stabilize the bridge position. since it floats normally, it easily comes out of tune and is impossible to intonate properly. takes away some vibrato bar functionality but i don't intend to use it anyway. i'm more interested in having the guitar tuning stable.

All right, How did you do that? I'm very interested in that and pictures would help too. Thanks a lot for all the updates by the way, I appreciate it.

well, here's a description. i'll have to take pictures of mine next time the strings are off.

http://www.jag-stang.com/techTips.htm#bridge

Again, if you want more tuning stability one of the easiest things that you can do is to secure the rocking bridge. It's simple and doesn't cost more that $3.00. First remove the bridge and notice that the posts on the bridge are much smaller than the holes on the bridge plate. First, take the electrical tape and cut a peice about 8" long. Put the tape on the post to see how much to cut off, I'm talking about the width of the tape now, just cut the whole 8 inches the same length as the posts. Now wrap the electrical tape around the posts. Check to see if it will go into the bridge plate, if it doesn't, unwrap a little of the tape and cut it off. Try it again and again until you can slide the bridge in and out vertically, but you can't move it back and forth horizontally.

some pictures here.
http://jag-stang.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14686

Pacomc79

exhausted wrote:

here's what i've done so far today. big improvements i think. i got a lot of ideas from jag-stang.com.

setup:
*wrapped bridge posts with tape to stabilize the bridge position. since it floats normally, it easily comes out of tune and is impossible to intonate properly. takes away some vibrato bar functionality but i don't intend to use it anyway. i'm more interested in having the guitar tuning stable.
*flipped the bridge such that the screws to adjust the saddles face the pickups. now i can actually access the screws and intonate the guitar.
*lowered the tail piece closer to the body, increasing the break angle over the bridge for more tension.
*12-52 (heavy) strings, adjust truss rod, intonate.
*adjusted pickup heights to taste. coupled with the heavy strings, the output is increased somewhat but still pretty low. i just turn on my compressor.

electronics:
*reversed pot lugs to make them turn "right-handed". that's a left-handed problem. fender wires left-handed but uses right-hand taper pots, making the tone control useless.
*replaced .047 tone capacitor with a .022 orange drop. the 47 is too dark. using a 22 makes the tone control more subtle over the range of the pot. i am using the tone control to roll off highs on the bridge pickup so i wanted a good tone control.
*grounded the input jack and all pots together. don't know if it made a difference but it's good practice i think.

thinking of the following:
*new CTS pots including my usual linear volume pot for better volume control. requires drilling the control plate because the stock pot shafts are small. so i'm hestitant to do it. if i gibble that control plate it will be hard to find another.
*duncan antiquities along with all new cloth wiring throughout (not for a while)
*converting one slider switch to a pure 3-way pickup selector. converting the other slider to be a capacitor selector for the bridge pickup. say, off/.01/.02. and still having the master tone available to both pickups too. the bridge pickup sounds great overdriven with some highs rolled off. it would be nice to have some different caps on a switch and leave the neck pickup full throttle. i'd lose the parallel out of phase sound but it's not a very good sound anyway.

sounds perfect. I bet it's a good mate with all types of fuzzes and the roll off on the OCD should be phenominal. Want to come do some work on my stuff too? My LP is way to dark.

How are the 12's. I bet you can play it really hard now. Should sound huge.

enharmonic

Mustangs are cool

xtremehardy388

exhausted wrote:

well, here's a description. i'll have to take pictures of mine next time the strings are off.



some pictures here.
http://jag-stang.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14686

Thanks a lot. I am going to have to do that to mine. Keeping it in tune is a bitch

exhausted

yeah, the tuning seems pretty solid now.

i've also worked out the new switching scheme so i'm going to give that a try today if I get a chance.

the front slider will select pick ups. the bacl swith will turn capacitors on and off for the bridge pickup. sort of fixed tone controls. the volume and tone pots will stay as is I think.