Fender Mustang restoration

[GGJaguar]

Not Guild related, but I thought I’d share this guitar restoration story. My wife’s late father played guitar and was in a bar band for most of his adult life. I’ve seen photos of him playing inexpensive archtop guitars (Harmony, etc.) in the 1950s, but in 1965 he bought a blue 1964 Mustang. We’re not sure if he bought it new or used, but my wife thinks he would have been frugal and bought it used. Here are a couple of photos from the early 1970s – one with my wife, as a young teen, playing the Mustang and one with her dad (I’m digging the Ampeg Gemini amp he used!).

 

[GGJaguar]

After her dad passed away, this guitar was the only memento she had of her dad (evil stepmother kept everything). I owned a blue ’66 Mustang at one time so I was looking forward to seeing it. That’s when she warned me that sometime in the 1980s her dad decided to strip the guitar and stain it. Of course, being a vintage guitar fan, my reaction was “Nooooooooo!!!!!!”. When I opened the case, all I could see was a hot mess. Not only was the body stripped of finish and then stained, but the neck was stripped as well (bye-bye headstock decals). And if you know vintage Fenders, you know that the “economy” models like the Musicmaster, DuoSonic, Mustang and Bronco had mismatched, multi-piece bodies. You can clearly see the body is constructed of 6 pieces of alder in the photo below. To add insult to injury, he shellac’d or varnished the rosewood fingerboard like you would do on a maple fingerboard (or Rickenbacker).

 

[GGJaguar]

We had the guitar for a few years and the last time we had it out of the case, my wife opined that she hated the brown stain and loved the guitar when it was blue. I asked her if she would like to have it restored. She didn’t realize that was a possibility and enthusiastically asked me to make it happen. There are many people out there that can do competent restorations of vintage Fenders, but I reached out to Rich Rice at Rice Guitars (check out his Osprey model!) because I knew this one was going to be challenging and he had done a beyond-incredible restoration of a mutual friend’s Gibson ES-335 severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Rich doesn’t always accept restoration work, but he agreed when I told him the backstory and how this guitar has such high sentimental value and would remain with our family.

I have many photos that document the process, but I’ll present a short version to save bandwidth and server space. First, the neck work was tackled with the nasty goop hand-scrapped from the fingerboard. The “clay” dots on vintage Fenders will dissolve in solvent so manually removing the finish was the only option.

 

[Stuball48]

Keep 'em coming!

 

[GGJaguar]

Next, an attempt to reduce the mineral stains in the wood was made by separate treatments of wood bleach, lemon juice and salt, oxalic acid paste, and finally white vinegar. The cleaned neck was given clear and tinted coats of nitrocellulose lacquer. A super accurate 1964 Mustang repro decal was applied (I cannot divulge my source, sorry).

 

[GGJaguar]

Now on to the body. It was cupped from when it was originally stripped and stained so it needed to be planed flat. Once flat, it was sanded and sealed with marine epoxy, then shot with primer.

 

[GGJaguar]

The body was then sprayed with several very thin coats of ReRanch Daphne Blue nitrocellulose lacquer. After all the necessary wet sanding, the guitar was assembled.

 

[GGJaguar]

It plays and sound just like a mid-1960s Mustang should. Here’s a photo of the some of the grandkids holding their grandfather’s guitar.

The End.

 

[walrus]

Excellent story and photos! Love it - that came out beautiful!

walrus

 

[SFIV1967]

Great story and great pictures! Thanks for sharing! Your luthier surely knew how to do that restoration!
Ralf

 

[Stuball48]

What a magnificent job and thanks for the exciting ride from start to finish. Simply said--Beautiful!!!! Enjoy!!!

 

[Quantum Strummer]

That's awesome! Mustangs are very cool guitars, made even cooler in this case by being a restored family heirloom. Love the Mustang sound with both pickups on: clucky in phase, skronky out of phase.

-Dave-

 

[jp]

Love these restoration stories, and I love that Mustang. It seems that it was very trendy, esp. in the 70s to strip off original finishes from guitars and go natural. I can't even imagine how much patience it took to purge that fretboard of the awful varnish job. The results are really stunning.

Also, your story painfully reminds me how regretfully sold off my '64 Duo-Sonic II that was also stripped of its original Daphne Blue finish. <sigh>

Thanks for sharing, GG!

 

[GGJaguar]

Epilogue: something old and something new from Leo Fender. The 1964 Fender Mustang next to a 2018 G&L SC-2.

 

[AcornHouse]

Nice! Which scale length is it, 24” or 22”? In the shot with the grandkids it looks to be shorter, but next to the G&L not that short.

 

[GGJaguar]

Nice! Which scale length is it, 24” or 22”? In the shot with the grandkids it looks to be shorter, but next to the G&L not that short.

Long scale (24"). The big visual clue for MM, Duo and Must scale length is the dot marker on the last fret. If there is no dot marker there, it's 24". If there is a dot marker there, it's 22.5".

 

[GAD]

Dude, that is amazing and brought a tear to my eye. I love seeing vintage guitars restored and always wonder at their story, but to see the story just makes it so much better.

That is some glorious work, too!

 

[GGJaguar]

Dude, that is amazing and brought a tear to my eye. I love seeing vintage guitars restored and always wonder at their story, but to see the story just makes it so much better.

That is some glorious work, too!

Thanks! Rich did an amazing job over a 4 month period. He is very meticulous and updated me often for my input. But best of all was seeing my wife's face when I opened the case to show her. Absolutely priceless. Happy wife, happy GGJaguar.

 

[gilded]

Wow, that's the best Mustang re-do I've ever seen. I'm happy just thinking about it!