My Fender Mustang Story

by Guitar Bassman

Fender Comp Mustang

I’ve owned and sold quite a few guitars, basses and effects over the years and have been playing in bands almost just as long. This past December though, is the first time I acquired a Fender Competition Mustang Reissue. I bought the guitar used for $300 on eBay (with a hard case and after market DiMarzio pickups!) which is a great deal considering the guitar retails for $699.99 just about everywhere, (excluding the case). It’s “Candy Apple Red” with the trademark white competition stripes on the body. It has a great short scale neck, and is nicely crafted in Japan. My intention was to buy it for my girlfriend with small hands to play. She’s a great player, but doesn’t own any electrics, just acoustics. So this was/is to be her first electric guitar due to its short scale and light weight.

This is where I ran into problems…I took the guitar to Guitar Center in Hollywood to get a set-up and get the action and intonation really nice for my girlfriend, as I work full-time and don’t have time to do it myself. The set-up was completed without a hitch. Apparently though, whoever wired the guitar for the aftermarket DiMarzio’s did it wrong, very wrong. As I type this, it has been a week since I have heard from the tech about the status of the guitar. When I talked to him previously he was having trouble getting both pickups to function correctly with the pickup switches on the Mustang. One would work and then the other wouldn’t, both pickups wouldn’t function at the same time. The tech remarked to me that if he ever has to work on a Fender Mustang again, he will charge double. He also mentioned that so many people, “want a Fender Mustang to be heavily modified to sound like a Les Paul, like Kurt Cobain’s, but the reality is they should just buy a Les Paul”. I tend to disagree with this statement and think the main reason people want a Mustang is for the feel/playability, then they would like to alter the sound.

Basically one of the pickups is a DiMarzio super distortion single-space humbucker, and the tech claims that this pickup cannot work with the guitar, something about having to bypass the tone knob. I feel like I’ve seen it work before in other peoples guitars. Are there any Mustang know-it-alls or experts out there who can help me out or know at all what he means? Please let me know.

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