Mint or parchment pickguard for ocean turquoise ?

[ThePearDream]

Voilà !

Perfect!

The parchment looks better with the binding IMO. Besides, by the time Fender was binding the necks, the minty celluloid guards had been phased out.

[Embenny]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of anachronistic combos (like mint with blocks or binding, or gold guards on target burst 3TS). The parchment suits the binding both in terms of coordinating and also for making sense as a reissue. It looks great!

That one with mint still looks amazing, and I never tire of mint on Fenders of the blue-green persuasion, but that parchment is just perfect.

[MazzyJaster]

You can't go wrong with parchment, it goes with anything, whereas mint is color specific.

[marqueemoon]

Just when my AO GAS was subsiding.

[jdiogon]

AO ?

[Steadyriot.]

AO ?

American Original.

[jdiogon]

AO ?

American Original.

It is a beautiful series of guitars indeed.

[MazzyJaster]

It's parchment for me.

[adamrobertt]

Ya, the first thing I did when I got my '65 Thin Skin in Firemist Silver was get rid of the ugly mint guard. I had a tort one on there for awhile, but I settled on parchment and I think it looks great.

[andy]

Great call with the parchment! And this is coming from a big mint fan.

[sunburster]

Yeah, for me bound necks need parchment guards (matches the binding, plus it's historically correct for a mid-late 60s JM). Otherwise I go with mint.

[artmem]

I wouldn’t have said parchment, but it actually looks really good.

[bobafettlives]

Mint!

[mr bungle]

I have an AO IBM 2019 that I bought mid last year and I wasn’t a huge fan of the tortoise guard.

Was tossing up either parchment or mint, but I really like this mint look that I found online.



Fender guards were talked of as being the lightest mint shade available, but it still looked too green to me on arrival. Got one for a reasonable price on Reverb.



So 6 hours in the harsh direct sun of South Island New Zealand later (we have high UV levels here due to the hole in the Ozone layer as well as the recent massive Tongan volcanic eruption) and the green was toned down to my taste.



Swapped the guards today and I’m really happy with the result. Not period correct as already mentioned on this thread, but neither is the neck radius amongst other things.

Hard to tell from the pics, but it’s a really close match to the original online sample pic.

[atomicwash]

That's a great look!