My '66 Mustang Project - The Punkstang has landed!

[UlricvonCatalyst]

I've been assembling parts for a while and have most of what I need now, so I figured it was time I introduced my '66 Mustang project to you all.

I got this '66 body quite a while ago, stripped down and refinished - as a baffling number of bodies seem to be - in Baby-shit Brown.



As you can see, I couldn't resist getting straight down to business with the sandpaper, just to get a sense of what was under there.

My original idea was this:



which was inspired by the timeless elegance of this:



I got all excited about Milk Paint at one point (as you might too if, like me, you have no guitar-painting equipment to speak of, live in a flat with nowhere really to spray-paint AND live in a part of the world where two consecutive days without horizontal rainfall may well be as close as you get that year to something you can call summertime).

The more I looked into it, though, the more I realised that finding the pigment I'd need to achieve my preferred Dakota Red-ish hue was going to be difficult, if not impossible; the folks who market milk paint know their target market well and know that those sandal-wearing beardniks want their homes to be a domain of distinctly earthy hues like Terracotta, Saffron and, well, Baby-shit Brown.

So I rethunk the whole thing and one day had an Eureka! moment when I remembered that not only had I used this stuff -



- before, with some success (I lived a Madcap Laughs-style bare-boards Boho bedsit kinda existence in my younger days), I actually still had some left!

Now I'm not seriously expecting a 20-something-year-old tin of blackboard paint to still be useable after all this time, but I'm certainly willing to get a piece of wood and slap some onto it, experimentally, and if it doesn't work out buy some more of the stuff.

So anyway....my revised plan should hopefully look something like this:



The scratchplate is actually Mint Green, but that doesn't seem to be an option over at our neighbours' dressing room (thanks all the same, Shortscalesters). Anyway, I'm sure you get the gist.

I'm excited by the prospect of putting this guitar together and I'm going to need some helpful advice and good vibrations along the way, so stay tuned for the next exciting episode....

[saxoftenest]

Sweet! As I currently live in apartment and have avoided pursuing home finishing options, I can't wait to see how this one turns out.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Having purchased a (now rare and possibly collectable) Woolworth's electric palm sander a while ago I was pleased to discover what short work it made of sanding off the offending lacquer when I plugged it in and let rip yesterday. I was less pleased by the fine ash cloud and subsequent coating of dust covering the place and quickly concluded that my kitchen worktop wasn't the best place for this operation.

So I borrowed a friend's 'Workmate' clone and took it outside. The sander didn't have much oomph left by this time so I enquired about replacement pads for it while I was picking up a few odds and ends at my local hardware emporium, only to balk at the £3.50 they were asking for their Black & Decker-compatibles. If the pack had contained an assortment of different grades I would've gladly bought it, but six of the same grade wasn't what I needed.

Luckily - thriftiness being the mother of invention - I was able to devise my own cheap alternative: 35p for a sheet of cloth-backed glass paper and a dab of super-glue on the back. Result!



And talking of thriftiness, while I was in I noticed wood filler sitting on the counter at £1 a tub - the very same stuff I'd just paid £6.18 for in B&Q on Saturday! Naturally I bought a tub then went fishing through the bin for my B&Q receipt. I'll be claiming my refund from the WalMart Corporation tomorrow. The moral of the story: support the little guy.

Now, either my technique is too heavy-handed or I've used a too-severe grade of paper, or both, but the end result is that my Mustang might have slightly different contours from some others out there thanks to a couple of minor FUBARs around the horns. Dangerously close to the neck pocket, actually, but luckily without fatal consequences. Oh well - you live and learn.

In any case, the body is now sanded more-or-less smooth and the filler is drying in the many depressions on the top. I'm not going to bother unduly about an area no-one's going to see, so the back will go unfilled.

Pics to follow once I've made a bit more progress....

[pulse.]

Black with goldguard is so classy

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Progress has been slow but steady.



Sanded, filled and sanded again.

I had an ancient tin of MDF primer I was going to cover the body with, but when I opened it I discovered it had gone bad, so once I get a painting stick organised I'm thinking I'll just go with the first coat of blackboard paint on the un-primed wood, unless someone who knows better can persuade me that's a terrible idea. If it stays dry I should manage a coat or two by Saturday, so stay tuned....

[UlricvonCatalyst]

First coat applied. What started as a bright, sunny day in Glasgow has turned to one that's overcast with occasional torrential downpours, so it may take a while to dry.

Having slapped the paint on with a brush, the finish is far from smooth, but we'll see how it looks after some light sanding once it's dried. The blackboard paint I used isn't the 'one coat' type, so I'll probably give it a second coat as I'm not in any great hurry to finish....I'm still waiting on bridge thimbles, amongst other things, to arrive.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Well....if I had it to do over I'd have gone with a painting sponge for the application. After two coats and some extensive sanding, the surface is a mix of brushstrokes and woodgrain, with a few sand-throughs which could pass for natural wear/relicing. I'm almost ashamed of how shabby it looks compared to the flawless finishes I see on here all the time, but if you can't punkify a Mustang then something ain't right in the world!

Then again, seen from a certain angle, it does have a kind of thinskin-like quality to it.

To continue the improvisational nature of this build, I decided to apply some Ikea Beeswax Balsam I'd bought some years ago in the impulsive way you do when shopping there. It's meant to be used on unfinished wood, but as none of the ingredients appear to be particularly noxious I figured it'd be safe enough and would add the sort of lustre I wanted on top of the blackboard paint's matt finish.



You're supposed to leave it 24 hours before applying a second coat, so I figure it may soak in some more over the next day or so. Either that or it'll interact with the paint with unforeseen volatility, reducing the guitar and my house to a pile of ashes. Only time will tell. When it does, I'll assess whether there's anything to be gained from a second application.

Meantime, I couldn't resist a quick mock-up:

[chnlone]

That last picture is totally money.

[PoppaPopp]

Big thanks for my new signature Ulric! I hope you don't mind

[desertlimosine]

Damn, that last pic looks fantastic!

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Okay, so after a shamefully long break I decided it was time to get a move on with this neglected stepchild of a project.

I'd originally figured on sourcing a pair of period-correct pickups and found one, complete with switches on OSG (thanks Jimbo (I think)!). After missing one auction too many I thought I'd just buy a new vintage-spec one to make up the pair and got in touch with Jess Loureiro who'd done me a good deal on a pair of pickups for my Jazzmaster, but he was on a hiatus due to having a broken wrist at the time. As luck would have it, I soon won an auction for one made by Only Music. So far so good....

When it arrived, despite the fact it was supposed to be a bridge pickup, it was trailing a pair of black and white wires just like the pickup I already had. After some asking around here and on Shortscale I was advised how to work out if it was the polar opposite of my neck pickup and sure enough it wasn't. Now here's where I got yet another indication that I lead a charmed life and somebody up there likes me: I contacted Only Music and the guy who runs it (whose name I've obviously forgotten) was very apologetic about having sent the wrong one, or one with the wrong lead wires or wound the wrong way or whatever it was that was actually wrong and suggested I send him back that one and in return he'd send me a matched RWRP set at no extra cost. Now that's what I call good service!

So, despite seemingly having everything I needed after I found a vintage-correct capacitor (thanks jim93!) the head of steam my project had built up had dwindled to a sad little puff after all the false starts and so on. The final nail in the coffin came when I realised that the after-market scratchplate I'd bought wasn't going to fit without some sanding. The guitar sat in its case, neglected if not entirely forgotten, from a few weeks after my last post on this thread until some time last week when I figured it was time I got to work with the sandpaper.

My soldering skills are not up to much so, as with my Jazzmaster before this, I enlisted the aid of my pal Fossil who made it all look easy once again, getting us to this stage yesterday....



....which I then moved a bit further ahead with this morning after drilling some pilot holes and rounding up all the pickguard screws I could find....



....eventually ending up this afternoon with a handsome new Punkstang:



Eagle-eyed viewers will spot that it's actually a Fender Mu give or take half an S. I taped two strips of masking tape over the machine head ferrules as a few of them dropped out when I picked up the guitar one time and like a total tube I ran one strip slap-bang through the middle of the headstock decal, not expecting the masking tape adhesive to be quite as strong as it is. Oh well, if I wanted to get really upset about something I could think of better reasons than a bit of an action transfer flaking off.

When I strung it up the action wasn't great, but after shimming the neck pocket it feels a whole lot better. Annoyingly, one of the (brand new) switches was acting up, but a wee skoosh of Servisol seems to have cured it for now.

It's a bit too early to make any declarations of love towards it, but I've put more of myself into this guitar than any other I've ever owned so that means our relationship is already pretty special. To be honest I had no great expectations, having never owned a Mustang or even known anyone with one, but I am loving that twang already.

This is indeed what you might call a happy new guitar day.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Mate!! That looks fabulous!!! Better late than never, eh?

It's not helping my eagerness to get my own late-running project done & dusted, especially as it has a couple of aspects of yours (dark, stained body & parchment/mint guard).

[mcjt]

She looks great, man!

[mozzuk]

Great project and result (and an enjoyable read). Always good to see a guitar resurrected and playing again.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Thanks for the good wishes, raggazzi. Me and the old girl are getting along famously at the minute.

After fixing the action, the neck - for which I'm indebted to OSGer Franco - is one of the nicest I've known, '70s brass nut and all. Then again maybe that's because I strung her up with a set of .10s (I seldom go lower than .11s these days).

Luau kindly offered to send me the final part I'm still missing - the grub screw that holds the tremolo arm in place - so once that arrives we're well and truly done. The Mustang trem gets a bad rap, but mine seems to stay in tune beautifully, though there was a moment when I did my first dive-bomb when I thought otherwise; it turned out to be either the ball ends or the twists on the end of the strings settling in, after which they've been on their best behaviour.

Anyway, the honeymoon is still in full swing. See you guys later!