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.
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:
