1964 L-Series Fender Mustang
I bought this at a pawn brokers' auction in Sydney Australia for AU$300 in 1984. The serial number was L77103 it was dated 3 Dec 64. Despite being 20 years old it was in immaculate condition except for the beautiful aged patina on the paint and varnish.
I sold it a year or two later to Steve Jackson (Jackson's Rare Guitars) for the same price as I paid for it and he then resold it. I saw the new owner's band a while later and somehow knew that it was my ex guitar but he had deliberately trashed it so it would look more like its age - paint scraped off and generally bashed up. I was horrified and quite depressed about it afterwards.
The photo at top right shows me playing it at the Rex Hotel, Kings Cross, Sydney in July 1984. Unfortunately it's the only photo I have of this guitar from that time.
The other photos on this page are of this exact guitar that I coincidentally stumbled across on ebay in 2015, 30 years later when it sold for $2200 even though the case and the whammy bar were missing. I know it's the same one because of the serial number and the date stamp on the neck. That seller in Wagga told me that he had got it from his brother and he was pretty sure that he got it from Jackson's Rare Guitars. The blue paint has aged to be more of a green colour. You can see the original colour in the neck recess in the picture below. This colour was known as Daphne Blue.
This is a '65 one showing the style of case that mine came with, and the original colour.
The Fender Mustang was introduced in August 1964 as a "student model". Originally designed with a 22.5 inch scale, the Mustang is almost always found with a 24 inch scale. Being a '64 model, my one was possibly a 22.5 inch scale but I don't know for sure. Early models had a slab alder body (like mine), but it was given the Fender contour body in early 1969. The Mustang was discontinued in 1982 but reissued in 1990 because of its popularity among guitarists of the grunge rock movement e.g. Kurt Cobain.
Instead of having a pickup selector switch each pickup had an on/off/on switch, and the second "on" position reverses the phase of the selected pickup, allowing the pickups to be either in or out of phase when in parallel. It was a pretty versatile and good quality guitar. The tremolo system was also quite unique.
August 1964 Mustang specs
- Slab body, red or white or blue finish
- Gold "transitional" peghead logo
- 2 slant mounted pickups with plastic covers and no visible poles
- 2 on/off switches
- Master volume and tone
- Tremolo.
It had a unique sound that was quite useful in some songs, but not much good for others. Apparently John McLaughlin played one of these almost exclusively in the late '60s to early '70s.
