I wanted a "second" guitar, preferably a hardtail with double coils, that's affordable enough to stop me being scared of taking it out of the house, and something that's generally just fun to play. First impressions:
-Holy shit, this thing weighs next to nothing. It's got the 1969-era body contours so there's no issue of sore arms or achey shoulders. So smol, so light. I forgot how comfy mustangs are.
-The double coil pups were the first thing I expected to mod, but they sound fine for the time being - decent output, and no squeal or excess noise, even with gain. I'd probably upgrade to units with chrome covers or something.
-The 12" fretboard radius feels really flat but the neck profile is comfortable enough. The maple feels like almost bare wood, so it's nice and smooth without thick layers of goopy varnish.
-I even like the colour! The imperial blue finish has sparkles in it. Very cool.
-It's stupidly cheap (£114 on the high street). I own reverb pedals that cost more than that.
The negatives are pretty minor, and can almost certainly be put right with a setup come restringing time. The action's a little high, the strings feel like cheese wire (which may or may not because I've grown unused to the 24" scale) and the truss rod may need adjusting. As one or two others mentioned in earlier threads, the fretboard could do with some lemon oil because it's a little dry, which is particularly noticeable when playing bends. The pickguard and control plate don't *exactly* line up, but there's no massive gap between them and that sort of thing is pretty much expected at this price point.
I'll hold off on pics for now, because the stuff that's of most interest is probably the size and shape of the body routs, which will dictate what modding you can or can't do. At some point I'll probably swap the pups out and possibly do a coil split on the neck position to bring back some of the Fender jangle, but to be honest there's not a great deal I'd change. It's just really fun to play around with, and the hardtail bridge (held down with five screws, so feels nice and solid) makes it a rare example of a Fender offset that's got good sustain.
Where the hell was this when I was sixteen?
terminology for "it sounds brighter and noticeably better." here.
