Bringing an ORIGINAL 1964 Fender Mustang back to life

[oipunkguy]

Some people have read I do some guitar restoring on this forum, and I'll like to share the experience I had with this guitar. In March of this year a customer brought in to me what use to be a sweet guitar. It was an original 1964 Fender Mustang. In fact the date stamped on it was September 8th, 1964. This model fender had only been in production for less then a month! these guitars become a product line of Fender in August of that year.
However, this guitar has seen better days. But first let me describe the pictures below.
the Mustang neck had it's original finish on it, with only light checking. all the parts were removed except the original mustang bone nut. the marks on the headstock, are what I can only assume are tape marks, that left a permanent mark, due to sun fade. I can only assume this was to tape back the original decal that fender put on top of the finish, as it started to peal off. The neck had quite a nice flame in the maple. Also, this neck was so, so, so thin. the reissue mustangs that fender makes today is nothing compared to this neck. The frets were tiny, it reminded me of mosrite frets, with very little fret wear, and nicely aged clay dot fret markers.
The body is popular, originally finished delphine blue. the first mustangs only came in
olympic white, delphine blue, and either fiesta or dakota red, I forget which. at some point a complete retard decided to strip the original finish, and stain it this nasty color and rub a crap load of varnish all over this guitar. like, the neck, all the parts were gone, probably sold off on ebay to be long forgotten. The only thing that was left, was one strap button (held on with a rusty nail, and no, I'm not kidding) the original brass guitar cavity shielding (heavily tarnished) ,and a couple of unusable guitar wires.
The customer asked me if there was something I could do with it. I told him I could bring it back to life, but would need a down payment for parts. So the instrument sat for about a mouth before I begin working on it, while I figured out what I needed to buy in parts. The customer and I both decided to go with new reissue mustang parts by fender, for two reasons. First, it would be more cash effective, and two, old parts on a guitar with new paint would look totally off.
The customer then left me a down payment, and thus my odyssey began. I'll post more pics and comments tomorrow.
thanks!
Oipunkguy

[oipunkguy]

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[MWaldorf]

Hey, nice to see a Mustang coming back to life! Weren't the Mustangs the last Fenders to have a veneer board? I think the "professional" line guitars got a slab board starting in '62. I used to have a Jaguar with a veneer board Mustang neck. Nice guitar.

I look forward to seeing how the project progresses.

Mel

[oipunkguy]

I'm not as much of a historian on fenders as some people might be, but I wasn't aware of any veneer fender necks. this particular mustang is a one piece maple neck, rosewood fretboard, and i believe it's a three piece popular body. there's no veneer on this one. I do know that the mustang came with the option of poplar or mahogany, at least through 65.
one other note, these mustangs were considered the slab body version, meaning it had no contour on the backside like later mustangs.
will be back tomorrow with more pics.
cheers all.

[Dennisthe Menace]

I'm not as much of a historian on fenders as some people might be, but I wasn't aware of any veneer fender necks. this particular mustang is a one piece maple neck, rosewood fretboard, and i believe it's a three piece popular body. there's no veneer on this one. I do know that the mustang came with the option of poplar or mahogany, at least through 65.
one other note, these mustangs were considered the slab body version, meaning it had no contour on the backside like later mustangs.
will be back tomorrow with more pics.
cheers all.

WoW! Oipunkguy, did you say a "BONE" nut?!?!? I find that VERY wild being that Leo had designed this to be the new Student Model Fender or the "New Budget Line" Series. Usually, you would find the Bone Nut on more expensive Models. You also had mentioned the early model had the "slab body version," is it possible that this body (at least the early version) shared duties with the Musicmaster and the Duo-Sonic??

[dubtrub]

For those interested in these guitars, here's a forum that is dedicated to them. Short Scale Forum

And here is a website full of photo's and information. Musicmaster, Duo Sonic & Mustang

Regarding the veneer neck. What that refers to is the thin cap (veneer) rosewood fretboard. Leo thought that the slab (solid and flat on the botton) fretboard was robbing guitars of their tonal characteristics and and changed to radius the top of the maple neck as well as the bottom of the fretboard to get it thin but still maintain the 7.25 radius.

[oipunkguy]

hey guys,

thanks for all the responses. yeah, I'm sure the nut was bone, I had to scrap it clean with a razor blade from all stuff that been stuck to it for nearly 50 years. it smelled like jell-o. the rosewood fretboard was quite thin, so I guess it is veneer.

[oipunkguy]

The next step to fixing this baby up was to first chemically strip it down. If anyone here wants to learn how to do this email me. Just remember this stuff smells really bad, and is extremely flammable. You always want to do this in a well ventilated area. In other words USE CAUTION!
Moving on, stripping down the neck was quite easy, with the exception that I had to be careful to keep the stripper off the fingerboard, because it will removed the fingerboard stain as well. This is easier said then done. This stuff can be quite messy, and requires a lot of clean up materials. I taped off the finger board top with masking tape, and then applied the stripper with a paint brush then allowed it to set up. Once the Stripper has dissolved the lacquer, I removed most of the sludge with a plastic scrapper, and then removed the excess with paper towels.
Stripping nitro usually isn't too hard. I repeated the process a few times until I began to see bare wood and then I stripped it one more time, rubbing it down with #2 steel wool. Once this was done I removed the masking tape, and cleaned the fingerboard with a little low odor mineral spirits.
Now, stripping varnish is another story. And this guitar has a lot of varnish on it. I lost count how many times it went through the stripping process, but I used at least a gallon of stripper before I got to bare wood. At least I had the slab body (no contours) to make it easier to use the plastic scrapper to remove the sludge. Again, when most of the varnish was removed, I stripped it one more time, rubbing it out with #2 steel wool. These pics below is what it looked like right after the stripping was finished and before any sanding.
Thanks all, all I'll post more tomorrow.
Cheers,
Oi

[oipunkguy]

hey peeps,

I been away for a few days sucking down turkey, and now I'm back with more on the Mustang. after I was done stripping the neck and body, next was to sand off any extra paint, finish, residue, etc. I tried to keep the stripper away from the heel of the neck, out of fear that I would remove the stamped date. this would be the only way to identify this guitar, because mustangs back then had the serial number engraved in the neck plate, which was now gone.
the one issue I had with the neck was that even under the finish, whatever was on the headstock (I'm assuming it was tape) also showed up on the bare wood underneath showing a patina mark where the wood didn't age. almost like a sunburn on the beach. so I had to sand this down until it was no longer visible. also I had noticed that someone attempted to drill out the low E tuner hole, and never continued the job to the other tuners, so that was something I would need to work out before installing the new fender vintage tuners.
the body was in worst shape. the soft popular wood had taken a beating in it's life. once the varish was removed, all the imperfections appeared. It was going to be a while before I could start the finishing process, so I first started to sand the body out some before I filled any dings or dents.
When I had time away from the project, I removed the nut and cleaned it off with a buffing pad and a razor blade to be reinstalled later on.
more to come soon,
cheers all

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[dubtrub]

Regarding the dents in the body, try using a wet wash rag laid of the dent and a hot iron. Heat and moister can raise dents a lot and depending on the dent, usually raise them back flush with the surface.

As for the blemishes on the headstock, if you have it down to bare wood, use chlorine bleach and see if you can work out that discoloration.