I found this poor thing on craigslist near Roanoke, VA last year. It has been modded beyond recognition and with very little sense of preservation. Whole body is oversprayed black with EVH stripes over it, tremolo, bridge, original electronics and even pickguard were thrown away and excessive cavities filled with wood filler. In the place of original pickups sat one Bill Lawrence L500 in bridge position and guitar also got new bridge from early G&L asat.
Funkiest mod of them all was probably the replacement of original tuning pegs - previous owner put 3+3 Schallers for LP style guitars, so first three machine heads turned in wrong direction But even in that sorry state, that guitar had something to it. Here it sits with my friend's original unmolested '65 mustang (btw this one was also originally red, as seen in neck cavity), both guitars were made in June according to neck stamps.
I took it home to Prague and had it partly restored. Local luthier repainted the headstock back with clear coat and put authenthic repro decal on it, put in gotoh machine heads, bridge position was corrected (it was slanted a little to the right), I had new neck pickup (SD antiquity mustang II) installed in neck position and put three way selector in place of tone control and installed coil splitting for the humbucker. This guitar rocks ! it sounds so awesome that even few very capable luthiers I know were in ave how can such poor looking thing play so well. Even though only original things that left in there is the wood, frets and most of the finish on the back of the neck, I love it to death. Here it is in it's current state on stage with me playing it
I did some comparison recordings between this guitar and that red '65 you see on the top photo and I was very surprised that both sounded very similar. The original '65 had a bit more twang to it and sounded a bit more springy thanks to the bridge, otherwise Van Mustang sounds very similar even with that crazy hair metal pickup (with coil tap of course).
it is very suitable for tight 80s hi gain tones, since it doesn't have too much low end, but it has lots of punchy mids and quite generous high end response. You are right about the twang, but I attribute that to slanted bridge position and combination of pickup eq characteristics/tonewoods.
