NGD! 66 Fender Mustang - 100% Original

[Usfpaul82]

Hello all! New to this forum with my first vintage. Was lucky enough to find this 100% original 1966 Mustang. I sort of purchased it a little blind, without being able to see any pictures of the insides, but I had a gut feeling on this one. Well it came in and I immediately started to do some heavy investigating. Much to my delight, everything is 100% original and untouched. I am actually about 99% sure I am the first person to ever remove the pickgaurd. All available date codes are all from august/september 66. The finish has checking all over, but there are no real chips or major dings anywhere. Neck is fantastic as well! I cleaned everything up nice, including the contacts on the pots and switches, stringed her up with fresh strings and man does she sing through my princeton reverb. The only thing I notice is that at some point someone shaved a very small amount of material from the neck pocket and unfortunately there was no tremolo arm Case is original and still functions perfectly. I'm also farily certain the 'ES' code on the body indicated this was a special order guitar, pretty cool.

Well I just thought I would share this beauty, here are some pics.

[PJazzmaster]

Nice. You can't go wrong with a vintage Mustang

[Embenny]

I have an all-original '66 red Mustang myself, so I have a couple of things I'd like to point out:

1) The neck pocket is missing most of the red along the right side of the paint stick void. This is different than any '66 I Have seen and is not consistent with Fender's finishing methods at the time. The yellow smears in there are also odd. That's not primer and it's not colour or clear. There's no reason for that to be there.

2) Tough to say from the photos, but it looks like more than checking - like the finish has sunk into the wood a fair bit more than any of my '60's Fenders have.

3) There is what looks like some sort of finish flaw tracking along the left edge of the vibrato plate and where it meets the pickguard. This is often seen when bodies are sanded with the plate in place (I have a stripped mustang that was done like this).

All of these combine to make me suspect that this might not be an original factory finish. It's just got too many of the common signs of an old refinish to be a coincidence, to my eyes.

[Usfpaul82]

I have an all-original '66 red Mustang myself, so I have a couple of things I'd like to point out:

1) The neck pocket is missing most of the red along the right side of the paint stick void. This is different than any '66 I Have seen and is not consistent with Fender's finishing methods at the time. The yellow smears in there are also odd. That's not primer and it's not colour or clear. There's no reason for that to be there.

2) Tough to say from the photos, but it looks like more than checking - like the finish has sunk into the wood a fair bit more than any of my '60's Fenders have.

3) There is what looks like some sort of finish flaw tracking along the left edge of the vibrato plate and where it meets the pickguard. This is often seen when bodies are sanded with the plate in place (I have a stripped mustang that was done like this).

All of these combine to make me suspect that this might not be an original factory finish. It's just got too many of the common signs of an old refinish to be a coincidence, to my eyes.

Thanks for the comments.

Finish is definitely original. The neck pocket was shaved down a small amount, likely to help with the neck angle. That’s why you see the missing paint beside the paint stick. Also the yellow stain you see in there is absolutely correct. That is the very first step in finishing the body. This is a very good read on fender finishes if you have the time, it’s a long article:

http://www.guitarhq.com/fenderc.html

There is no flaw in the finish next to the vibrato plate. When I got the guitar there was a slight haze on the finish. I cleaned it all off and what you are seeing is the bit that I didn’t clean off.


Here is another image i found online of a 66 body, you can see the same yellow in the pocket.

[kapepper]

Looks great and finish seems to be original

Nice entered special stamp. Wonder why....

[Maggieo]

Man, that is NICE.

Congrats!

Oh, does the '66 have the tummy cut?

[Con-Tiki!]

Oh, does the '66 have the tummy cut?

Nyet.

I have that exact guitar, except mine is super-tired.

[Embenny]

Ah, so it was a neck pocket modification and a cleaning artifact. Glad to hear it! It does look great.

[TinyEv]

Damn that's one fine looking 'stang! Congrats!

[VMM]

Wow. That is incredible. The previous owner took great care of it. One of those new old stock finds. Congratulations.