Affordable vintage Fender electric guitars
Certain Fender guitars that are over 25 years old (generally speaking, if it's over 25, it's vintage) are actually fairly affordable. At the time I write this, that means anything made from 1989 or earlier. But you have to watch yourself with vintage so you don't end up with a piece of junk.
The 1980s
Strats of the 1980s are easy to come by and fairly cheap. For example, I saw a 1987 Strat online recently for just 500 bucks. That's a mostly-guaranteed USA model because Fender did not start producing Mexico-made guitars until 1990. Why so cheap? Because in all honesty, late-80s Strats aren't that good. In fact, most of the models from the 80s have a maximum price tag - as in a reasonable price tag - of a top price of $2,000 currently. And that's only if the guitar is in absolutely perfect condition without a single ding on it with everything in perfect working order. Otherwise, 80s Strats can be had for between $500 to $1,500 quite easily.
When I say Strats of the 80s "aren't that good", I am saying that a brand new Classic Vibe Series Squier Strat is built better in every way. Modern machining, proper fit, proper electrics, proper everything. Or if you gotta have the Fender logo, the Standard that's made in Mexico is far and above a much better guitar.
Did everything from Fender suck in the 80s?
No, not everything, but most of it. Remember that in the early 80s, Fender was owned by CBS until they decided to get out of the guitar business in 1984. There was some shuffling about until Fender got back on its feet. During that time, some really crappy guitars were made...
...with one exception. Japan-made Fender guitars of the 80s were spot-on, including the Squier "JV" series; this is why I said Fender guitars of the 80s were mostly-guaranteed to be American. Some weren't. Some even had "Made in USA" on them when they were in fact made in Japan... not that that's a bad thing, because Japan was making them better at the time.
Is it worth it to seek out a Japan-made Fender from the 80s? Not really, because like I said above, today's Squier Strats and Mexico Strats fit the bill nicely - at a much nicer price.
The 1970s
Basically put, nothing from Fender made in the 70s is cheap...
...and I honestly don't understand why.
Okay, actually that's not true. I do understand why for certain models.
For the bass guitars, yes, Fender did some of their best basses in the 70s, and there is no arguing that point.
Regular 6-string guitars on the other hand started getting a lot of cost-cutting, starting in '71 with the infamous 3-bolt neck. Along with that came bodies that were less contoured, cheaper electronics and a whole host of other cost-cutter maneuvers.
The only attraction I see in a 70s model is the larger CBS headstock. On Strats in particular, there was that headstock with the "bullet" truss rod cover, completing a very cool look.
But being you can buy a reissue built better in every way... I just don't see the point of getting the real vintage because it would be a clunky, creaky mess, whereas the new one will be perfect.
Or better yet, if you want to save even more cash and get that total 70s look, get a Roadhouse Strat.
And if you really want to save money, get the Squier version.
ANY one of those guitars is better than a real-deal 70s Fender Strat.
70s Strats are bad, and I'm not kidding. Get a reissue or a Roadhouse or a Squier instead. Believe me, you'll enjoy any one of those new offerings much better. You totally do not want to deal with a 70s Strat that was built on Fender's strangled budget of the time.
The 1960s
This is the last decade I'll mention, because it's the one that's still accessible to regular players. Anything from Fender made in the 1950s commands sky-high prices to the point of being totally inaccessible, so that decade isn't even worth bothering with.
Strats of the 60s: All priced too high and totally over-inflated in value. Don't bother.
Telecasters of the 60s: Same problem. Overpriced. Don't bother.
Jaguars of the 60s: Affordable. Certain models can be had for between $2,000 to $3,000.
Jazzmasters of the 60s: Also affordable. I love the Jazzmaster, but most people don't because they think it's "too complicated". They run about the same as Jags in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. Sometimes they sell for less when enough potential buyers realize that no, a Jazzmaster is not the frickin' Jaguar Kurt Cobain played.
Mustangs of the 60s: This is the most affordable vintage Fender of the 60s you can get. Fender Mustangs are easy to come by and are routinely found selling for under $2,000. For a Fender built in the 60s, that's about as good as it is for a complete, working electric guitar.
To note, the Mustang did not start production until 1965. Also, A WARNING: Some Mustangs are a 3/4 scale with only a 22.5-inch scale length. Thankfully, not many of the 3/4-scale Mustangs exist (trust me, that's a good thing), but if you're entertaining the idea of buying a real-deal Fender Mustang of the 60s, check that scale length. If it's the 22.5-inch scale, you will hate it because it feels and plays like a toy guitar. The scale length to look for is 24-inch (same as the Jaguar).
Jags and Jazzes are the "safest" vintage 1960's Fenders you could buy
Strats, Teles and Mustangs had the ever-lovin' crap beat out of them. Not so with the Jaguars and Jazzmasters.
People who bought Jazzes and Jags in the 60s usually didn't beat on them, and this is why you can easily find them even to this day in near-mint or mint condition. That being the case, it's probably true the only thing you'll find wrong on either of those guitars is that the electronics will have disintegrated either a little or a lot due to age. Remember, something made in 1964 is HALF A CENTURY OLD at the time I write this. You can't expect 50-year-old guitar electronics to last that long, so it's probably true you'll have to gut the thing and have it redone.
While the Mustang is the most accessible and most affordable, if you get one, it will probably be wrecked. Jags and Jazzes on the other hand will most likely be not wrecked and only need minor restoration (with the electronics more than anything else) to get it back to tip-top shape.
Is it worth it to own the real vintage?
For some it is, but not for me.
I could, if I wanted to, order up a '67 Fender Mustang right now. As in a real one. The price is $1,400, and it's even in a color I like. But I won't buy it, nor will I ever.
I don't see "Wow... cool... vintage..." when I see that '67 Mustang. What I do see is a 47-year-old guitar that's barely playable and probably needs another $1,400 worth of work just to get it in semi-good condition.
The age of an instrument does nothing for me. And why would I bother with something 47 years old and beat to crap when Fender makes one new, as does Squier, with both being complete, working, properly-made and ready-to-rock?
Some guys are all about the vintage. If you are, that's fine. I'm not. But at least now you know which vintage Fender solid-body axes are still in the affordable range.
Poor man's guitar pick fixer
My guitar pick of choice these days is the Fender 351 Premium Celluloid in medium thickness, "Ocean Turquoise" color. It's a great pick, but the problem is that celluloid wears out real fast.
I repair my own picks. How? I use an emery board, commonly known as nail files.
I purposely buy Revlon emery boards to shape guitar picks with for two reasons. First, they are available in a 24-pack where most other packs are of a much lower count. Second, Revlon boards are very consistent. With other boards, at least half the pack will have grit that's too coarse or too smooth. Every Revlon board on the other hand is almost exactly the same, with only very minor grit variations.
You may see the price of those Revlon boards and say, "Whoa! Expensive!" Trust me, they're not. Remember, there are 24 of them in the pack. Divide the price by 24 (remember, free shipping) and you'll quickly realize you get a lot for cheap.
If you use picks that are .88mm or thinner, periodically filing the point with an emery board will make them last longer so you don't have to replace as often.
I call this a "poor man's" guitar pick fix because it is so cheap to do. In reality, there really is no better way to go about it. Using a machine like a Dremel rotary would file off way too much way too fast. When you want to make picks last longer, you have to file them down by hand. Fortunately, this usually only takes under a minute to do. Definitely an easy repair.
Can the Gibson Firebird X be saved?
A Gibson Firebird X is a ridiculously expensive guitar that looks like a children's toy. Oh sure, it's got every single feature you'd ever want, including one that you don't: The fact that when the proprietary battery dies, it renders the instrument unplayable until you put in a freshly charged battery. I'm not kidding. But it's New! and Interesting! and Innovative! Yeah, well the guitar community said to Gibson that they can take their new, interesting, innovative nonsense and shove it.
I've actually seen an X in person. It was at Guitar Center in Tampa and I asked the sales guy if any of them sold. One sold. Just one. And bear in mind this was at the height of the X's popularity. And no, I didn't play it. I could have if I wanted to, but I just didn't see the point.
The Firebird X could be saved... if it wasn't a Firebird X
Imagine for a moment if the X was a regular electric guitar with a passive pickup set, finished with a dark wine red color (see example of that color on this Epiphone), had an ebony fingerboard with rectangle block inlays and was priced at $900 or so for a USA model, and $500 for an Asian-made Epiphone model. I guarantee you Gibson would have sold every one of them and there probably would have been demand for more. But unfortunately, nobody at Gibson is that smart.
I honestly believe the Firebird X shape isn't that bad, but the styling choices are what make the guitar look like a toy more than anything else.
The guitar both in photo and in person just looks cheap. The swirl-style finish makes the body look like it's made out of plastic. The maple board with dot inlays looks like something you'd find on a Jay Turser guitar that sells for well under $200. The knobs and toggle switches make the guitar look more like a video game controller than an instrument.
Now if you took all that crap out, simplified the electronics to just be one push/pull volume (for coil splitting), one push/pull tone (for further coil splitting or possibly a boost switch), and a 5-way selector, finished the guitar in a solid color and put on a dark fingerboard with proper upscale inlay work, then yes, the X would be a great guitar that players would actually want.
Will it ever happen?
Doubtful.
Gibson does have enough talent to produce new and interesting guitars. But they keep missing the mark with bad color choices, useless features that nobody wants and a price point nobody can afford.
I do hope Gibson saves the design and reintroduces it as a simplified, mid-priced Epiphone model. The X design does have potential if it's done right the second time around, should that happen.
Squier Jazzmaster gets upgrades with both new and 21-year-old parts
My Squier Jazzmaster developed an electronics problem. The volume pot developed a nasty dead spot around a 3/4 turn, and the tone pot was getting a bit scratchy.
I'm not a guy who knows how to work on electronics when it comes to guitars. Or to be more accurate, I can work on them, but for anything outside of a normal setup or a simple soldering job, I'm not that good at it.
Stratocaster and Telecaster wiring is easy. Jazzmaster and Jaguar wiring on the other hand is a bit more complicated. Not insanely complicated, but I'm not familiar with it.
Fortunately, I know people that know how to work on guitars and now my Jazzmaster is all fixed up and slightly upgraded, so here's the story on that, along with a fair amount of guitar tech-talk.
Pots
Traditional Jazzmaster and Jaguar wiring uses potentiometers that are totally different from other Fender or Fender-style guitars.
The vast majority of Strats and Teles use 250K audio taper pots.
Jazzmaster and Jaguar electronics however use a 1meg linear taper for the volume pot and a 1meg audio taper pot for the tone control. I'm specifically talking about the lower lead circuit controls here and not the upper controls on the top horn.
In basic terms, what this means is that the volume pot has a fast cutoff while the tone pot has a more gradual cutoff.
Here's the bogey, however: While I was pretty sure the Squier Jazzmaster uses 1meg pots (the sound the guitar produces makes that fairly obvious), I had no idea whether it was using the traditional linear-volume/audio-tone pots or if they switched it up and did audio-volume/audio-tone.
I took a guess that it uses linear-volume/audio-tone. Fortunately, I was right because the resistance curve of the pots when in use still sounds the same as before.
Actually, that's not true. It sounds slightly different now, but for other reasons that I will mention right... now.
Things done, things fixed
Under the pick guard, the wiring was redone to be more of the traditional Jazzmaster style.
In addition to the replacement pots, copper shielding was installed, and a good amount of re-soldering was done because of Squier's "glob o' solder" way of doing things.
I provided the tech an electrical diagram of a Jazzmaster. When the guitar was finished, he said Squier mostly followed the original specs, but there were a few things that were done by the factory as cost-cutter measures. All of those cost-cutter things were found and attended to appropriately. As of now, my Jazzmaster is more true to original mid-1960's electronics spec.
The only stuff changed out were the lead circuit pots and a few wires. No other mods present other than the shielding, which really doesn't count as a mod.
How does it sound now?
The signal path has definitely cleaned up quite a bit. And since it now has proper grade pots in it, the treble increased to the point where it "screeches" a bit on 10. However, that is what traditional Jazzmaster wiring is supposed to sound like; this is commonly known as an "ice pick" sound. I'm okay with this, because turning the volume down a little cures that easily, being the volume pot is linear.
Also, the front (neck) pickup has more output to it now. Because of that, it's now louder in a good way. The rhythm circuit also has a little more treble response to it.
The immediate improvement I have is with the volume pot. I can now make very small adjustments when I want to whereas I couldn't before. It's nice having a good, proper linear volume pot on my Jazz.
The '93 USA Strat makes its contribution
I bought some Gibson "witch hat" style knobs for my Jazz. However, they don't fit on the new potentiometer posts, nor do my old Squier knobs fit on them either.
The knobs you see in the photo at the top of this article are from my '93 USA Stratocaster. Yes, I have 21-year-old knobs on my Jazz now. I cleaned them up as best I could since they were a bit dingy, and they have natural staining from being as old as they are. But the dirt-yellow (colored that way from age) lettering on the knobs does fit the look of the guitar quite well.
Why wouldn't the old knobs fit?
Replacement pots use American-spec post thickness, so they're slightly wider than Asian-spec.
From a distance, it looks like nothing was done, but a lot was done
Ordinarily, when a guitar player hears "modded guitar", he thinks that some major thing was done to the instrument that physically alters its appearance. That's not the case with my Jazz. It looks like any other Squier Jazz, save for the fact that what's under the pick guard has been significantly cleaned up along with the installation of new lead circuit pots.
The mods done may not be anything major, but I have a guitar that works 100% again, so I guess this could be considered a repair + upgrade + minor mod.
No love for the Fender Mustang
I do champion Fender design, but I don't like all their guitars. One guitar I simply can't stand is the Mustang.
Take the Fender Classic Series Mustang, for example. I love the look of that Mustang. Heck, I even love the look of it in a Squier flavor. Either guitar looks amazing.
Do I have a problem with the way the guitar plays? Not at all. The Mustang a very comfortable player. Small, light and easy to thrash around.
What I can't stand about the Mustang are the pickup slider switches.
It is the pickup switching that absolutely infuriates me when playing a Mustang with traditional electronics, be it by Fender or Squier.
For those not in the know, the technical name for a Mustang switch is a phase slider. How they work is like this:
One slider works for one pickup, the other slider for the other. Easy enough to understand.
Each slider has 3 positions. Back position (towards the bridge), center position which is OFF, and front position (towards the neck).
In-phase and out-of-phase pickup combinations only occur when both pickups are on. That means when a single pickup is on, it doesn't matter if the slider is set to front or rear because it will sound the same in either position. But when you engage both pickups, that's when you can get the in-phase and out-of-phase combos.
What is an out-of-phase sound?
On the Mustang, the out-of-phase sound is best described as "honky" or a "nasal" type tone. Almost no bass to it. Good for country picking or some surf tones with a lot of washy spring reverb. Absolutely awful when distorted in any way.
How do Mustang pickup selections work?
Here is a quick cheat sheet. B means back (switch towards the bridge), C means center position OFF, F means front (switch towards the neck).
CC - Both pickups OFF
BC - Rear pickup only
FC - Rear pickup only
CB - Front pickup only
CF - Front pickup only
BB - Both pickups, in-phase
FF - Both pickups, in-phase
BF - Both pickups, out-of-phase
FB - Both pickups, out-of-phase
In plain English, here are the pickup slider switch positions you will use most often, as the Mustang in reality only has 4 pickup combinations:
BC (slider 1 back, slider 2 center-position off): Bridge-only.
CF (slider 1 center-position off, slider 2 back): Neck-only.
BB (slider 1 back, slider 2 back): Both pickups.
BF (slider 1 back, slider 2 front): Both pickups, out-of-phase sound.
"Okay, cool. I get it now. But why do you not like this?"
It's the positioning of the switches and how you switch that drives me nuts.
I do dig the fact the Mustang has 2-pickup combinations that can be either in-phase or out-of-phase, which is arguably the best part of the guitar's electronics; no other Fender nor Squier does this.
Quick pickup switching however is simply not possible.
If for example, if you wanted to quickly switch from the rear to the front pickup during a song, you literally have to carefully push the rear slider to the center, then jump to the front slider and push it in either direction to get the front pickup turned on.
In other words, there's no way to do it quick.
Is there a better way to wire a Mustang?
I wouldn't wire it differently because that takes away from the guitar's tonal character.
I would however ditch the sliders and use two 3-way toggle switches instead.
Imagine for a moment the Mustang had no slider switches above the pickups, and instead had two 3-way toggle switches side-by-side on the bottom horn. That to me makes a whole lot more sense. You get all the same functionality, plus the ability to quick-change one-handed pickup selections.
"I don't care about the out-of-phase thing because I never use it anyway. Couldn't I just wire it with a single simple 3-way toggle always-in-phase?"
You don't have to. Fender already makes one with the Fender American Special Mustang. That model is as simple as it gets for Mustang pickup switching, as it dumps the slider switches completely and offers a nice, easy 3-way toggle on the bottom horn.
"But I don't get single-coil sounds!"
Wrong. You do. Fender was smart enough to make the volume control a push/pull coil selector. Pulled out, on the bridge it selects rear-side (bridge) coil and on the neck it selects front-side (neck) coil. Think of it as Telecaster-style, because that's basically what you get when the volume push/pull is pulled out. And no, that's not a bad thing because it's a cool sound.
True, it's not a traditional Mustang as there's no vibrato system and you don't get the out-of-phase combinations. But it is the absolute easiest Mustang to operate, no question about that.
Personally, I'd rather see a Mustang with two single-coil pickups, two 3-way toggles instead of the phase sliders and the vibrato on it. But that's just me. And I'd most likely hack up a Squier Mustang to do it. I'd love to have the out-of-phase option, just with different switching.
Even though I don't like the sliders on the Mustang, a Squier version of it may find its way into my guitar lineup someday. I'd simply have to deal with the fact that quick-changing a pickup selection isn't an option.
Two final notes:
First, if you're the type of player that does not switch pickups often when playing, you can use a Mustang as-is once you play around with the switching and understand how it works (which takes all of about 2 minutes to learn it).
Second, for those wondering if you smack the switches often when playing, the answer is no, you don't. Or at least not for most people. From my experience playing a Mustang, I didn't find myself hitting the switches when picking. Your experience may be different however. The only way to know if you do or not is to get one and experience it yourself.