Vintage Mishmash Muttstang Bass

Bringing your older offset back to life.
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UlricvonCatalyst
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
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Vintage Mishmash Muttstang Bass

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:34 am

Eh up, OSG. So I've been tracking down parts for quite some time now with a view to getting a (partly) vintage Muttstang Bass together, a kind of cousin to my parts Mustang.

The genesis of my project stretches way back to the 2010s when someone on my local Gumtree was selling a weirdo bass with a Musicmaster neck and 1967 Mustang Bass electronics housed in a, presumably home-made, mahogany mini-Jazz Bass body with silly (or are they innovative?) slanted pickup routs. Obviously the neck and pickups were the main event, but I dithered long enough that someone else grabbed it.

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Fast forward a few years and, like a bad penny, up it came again, unchanged but for a slightly inflated price tag. My cash flow being fortunately healthy at the time, I did a car park meet-up and handed over the seller's asking price, secure in the knowledge that I'd be able to flog the unwanted body and bridge, if not the quirky home-made hard case, and net a bargain neck and pickups/pots set. Can't remember the exact sums involved - hey it was back in 2015 - but I'd reckon I'm somewhere in the low £300s at this point.

Those in hand, I got onto eBay and picked up a 1978 Mustang Bass scratchplate for £25 and a brand new control plate from Tricked Out Guitars for whatever the going rate was in 2016, probably around the £15-20 mark. That left just a tailpiece/bridge and a body to complete the set, both of which proved considerably trickier to track down than the other parts. It's not like I was searching constantly, though; this was definitely a back-burner project, one among several I have on the go at any given time.

However, circa St. Patrick's Day 2022 I was back on eBay looking for a tailpiece and found a dealer in the States selling what they described as a "Justin Meldal-Johnsen Mustang Bass Bridge with Offset Saddles!" (more on this later). Given the difficulty in finding a vintage one I bit the bullet at a cost of about £65 delivered. Fortunately customs didn't get involved, as that would've added a so-called handling fee of about £15-20 in addition to whatever the customs bill would've been.

As luck would have it, the final piece of the jigsaw came in fairly short order; at some point I'd done a saved nationwide search on Gumtree, figuring I might just take the easy route and find an MIJ or JMJ bass at a bargain price, partly or fully funded by the sale of my assembled parts. Late one evening in June I got an email alert from Gumtree, and top of the list - usually populated almost entirely with Squeers and those PJ ones - was a "Fender 1966-68 Mustang Bass Body w/ modern hardware".

I could scarcely believe my luck, but a closer look revealed a somewhat "re-contoured" body whose unfortunate butchery makes no sense at all, as all it appears to do is pervert the line of the scratchplate. Even so, given that I was putting together a mongrel rather than a thoroughbred, I remembered the maxim "he who hesitates is lost" and got straight onto the seller. A couple of days later I had a vintage body and some surplus parts for a staggering £130 delivered.

Digressing momentarily to that JMJ tailpiece: the "modern" one that arrived with the body appeared to be pretty much identical to it. After stripping down the body I dug out the part to do a side-by-side comparison and couldn't spot any differences. There are no markings on either and they both weigh pretty much the same. So now I wonder if I have two after-market parts, two Squier parts, or two genuine Fender JMJ tailpieces. If anyone out there can shed any light on the subject, please chime in!

Build thread to follow; for now here's the Muttstang body in all its debased grandeur:

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Last edited by UlricvonCatalyst on Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
UlricvonCatalyst
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 7193
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 4:05 am
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Vintage Mishmash Muttstang Bass

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:04 am

So, my intent was always to make a kind of negative version of my 6-string project Mustang, and as with the off-piste blackboard paint finish I opted for on that one, I had a notion to go with milk or chalk paint for this one. As luck would have it, I was in Aldi's one day, perusing the addictive middle aisles, as you do, and what should I find there, keenly-priced as is their wont, but rattle-cans of white chalk paint.

Perfect, I thought....until I went outside one sunny day and found to my chagrin that one can wasn't going to be enough. :(

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Before

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....and after.

The coverage was spotty and just not 100% what I envisaged. I guess I could have just lived with it, but I figured I should aim higher, so I returned to Aldi as soon as I could manage, in search of the tins of brush-on chalk paint I'd seen previously. No joy at my nearby branches, but on a day out to my spiritual heartland of lovely Milngavie I found some. It was even reduced by £1 a tin as it was last week's thing. Result!

Eventually, I got round to building up the finish. Keyed the surface lightly with some fairly coarse sandpaper, then unfortunately forgot I had intended to use a sponge application and instead went with a brush, a la Punkie, creating brush strokes that were there to stay, short of sanding it way back, which I just couldn't be bothered doing.

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Here it is after a few coats (the back got the sponge application exclusively, and, as a result, is noticeably smoother).

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As you can see, the brush strokes are quite apparent. Quelle dommage. :whistle:

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As with its cousin, I went with a waxed finish to (hopefully) preserve the whiteness in the longer term. We'll see.

And that's about as far as I've progressed to date. Watch this space....

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