Fender Mustang: Guitars And Guns Go Hand In Hand
You can tell from his tattooed arm that Erik Byrne is no stranger to body modification. You can tell from his Fender Mustang modified to look like an M16 assault rifle, complete with real clip, that his guitars are no stranger to it either.
Eric takes us through the second half of his Fender Mustang collection in this video.
ERIK BYRNE: This next one is Competition Orange 1969, my second favorite guitar. My first favorite is the blue ’69. This is my second favorite. This was all original when I bought it but I don’t play my guitars in their original state. I put a Hot Rail, 500k pot. This is just a really nice playing guitar.
PATRICK OGLE: Is that -- That’s an original, not the reissue?
ERIK BYRNE: Right. This is an original. Yeah. This next one is a reissue, and I just picked this one up last week. They say that there are limited editions available only to the Japanese market. I know I’ve never seen one really available in the U.S. so I bought this one from a guy in Japan who sent it over.
PATRICK OGLE: I see you haven’t modified this one yet.
ERIK BYRNE: Yeah. It’s got a Hot Rail...
PATRICK OGLE: Okay. You did modify that.
ERIK BYRNE: ...500k pot. Actually the electronics in the reissues I’m not a huge fan of. The pots seem kind of junky so I even replaced the 250k tone pot as well, but in order to do that you have to re-drill the holes in the control plate here.
This next one is a 1969 Competition Lake Placid Blue reissue.
PATRICK OGLE: So that’s what the other one...
ERIK BYRNE: Yeah.
PATRICK OGLE: ...allegedly looked like when it came out.
ERIK BYRNE: Yeah. These are supposed to be kind of the same guitar. I’m not a huge fan of the reissues. One thing that I noticed right off the bat when playing them is the contour on for the forearm just doesn’t correct. I mean it’s really shallow way off. I mean it’s not a huge deal, but I don't know, and I don't like the vinyl scratch plates on them.
PATRICK OGLE: What are the scratch plates on the other ones.
ERIK BYRNE: Celluloid I think, so they do shrink over time. This one has gotten considerably smaller from when it was first made. You can really tell around the control plate how it just, you know, there’s a big gap in there now. This next one -- [LAUGHING]
PATRICK OGLE: I’ll tell you that this one is not a lot off the rack about this one the...
ERIK BYRNE: No. I had a...
PATRICK OGLE: ...[OVERLAPPING] got the control thing without knocking anything over.
ERIK BYRNE: A buddy of mine, [PH] David Wells, built this for me. I had one that I had made really crudely just out of a solid piece of wood. He’s a guitar builder, works for a company building bass guitars, and he was over at my house one day, saw my old one, and told me he can make me a new one much better than the one I had. This is essentially a Fender Mustang still. It’s got a Mustang bridge. I’ve got a Hot Rail in it. It’s got a Mustang neck. It’s got a different type tuner on it but this one has no volume knob, no control knob. It’s got an input jack right here and an on/off switch right here. There’s nothing else on it. I did solder in a resistor between the pickup and the output jack though to kind of replicate a volume pot, but there is no volume pot on here, and this is actual clip off of a real M16.
PATRICK OGLE: [LAUGHING]
ERIK BYRNE: [LAUGHING]
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