Cheap easy mustang mods

Fredsredguitar

HI I'm new to this forum and I absolutely love it. So much info on guitars. For my birthday last year my family purchased me a 65 mustang re-issue. I love this guitar (its my fifth guitar) but the sounds a little thin for my taste, Im not experienced in guitar modding at all and was wondering what I should do.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Freddie

minho422

well.. the thin sound is typical for a fender or any bolt-on neck guitars. I don't know if you meant 'thin' for its sustain or tone, but if you want to get more fat sound, try using tubescreamer or tube simulator pedal with both pickups on. otherwise, get higher gaged strings like 10s or 11s, change the nut to corian(about $20~30). also, this isn't recommended, but you could try removing the polyurethene finish on the body, so that the sound will reflect more to the body wood, and get more fat sound and sustain.

EvilPandaDog

minho422 said: well.. the thin sound is typical for a fender or any bolt-on neck guitars. I don't know if you meant 'thin' for its sustain or tone, but if you want to get more fat sound, try using tubescreamer or tube simulator pedal with both pickups on. otherwise, get higher gaged strings like 10s or 11s, change the nut to corian(about $20₃₀). also, this isn't recommended, but you could try removing the polyurethene finish on the body, so that the sound will reflect more to the body wood, and get more fat sound and sustain.

😕😐 I had never thought of any of those things.

I say you just put a Jb jr in the bridge. If that's what your after.

minho422

oh man.. I didn't think of changing the pickup

try several different singlecoil pickups at local guitar shop, and then put the one that you liked on your mustang

my personal favorite are alnicoV and big deeper(john mayer sig. strat)

Fredsredguitar

Thanks for the help, I like the thin sound of my strat, and my jagmaster, but it's just something with the pickups of the mustang...

jacksonjackass

Hi mate, Welcome to the forums 😉

There are a number of things you could do with capacitors, pots and pickups, but another thing you may want to do is make sure the previous owner didn't do any wiring mods.

Once you see it is original wiring, then you could change one or both of the pickups. Just so you know, I have a Seymour Duncan SSL-3 I'm selling to you may want to have a look at the specsheet on sd.com. If you're interested, PM me 😉

Fredsredguitar

Thanks for the wlcome. 😀

I was wondering if it had already been modded but I learned recently it was bought brand new so everythings original.

minho422

Fredsredguitar said: Thanks for the wlcome. 😀
I was wondering if it had already been modded but I learned recently it was bought brand new so everythings original.

the stock pickups aren't that bad, but it just sounds too plain. just switch those to whatever that fits your taste 😉

Robbmonster

I am pretty new to modding, but the more I learn about it, the more I believe that the single biggest influence on overall sound is the pickups. If the pickups sound thin, visit guitarfetish and take a look at some of the ones with 'hot' or 'fat' as part of the description.

In the meantime, try mucking around with your amp settings a bit.

SylvesterEschaton

You could always get a warmer sounding pickup in the neck, change the wiring of one of the toggles to be a 3 way switch (neck, bridge+neck, bridge) and change the other toggle to a hi pass switch so that you can still dial back the low end to get that thin sound when you need to.

Doug

Robbmonster said:

... I believe that the single biggest influence on overall sound is the pickups. If the pickups sound thin, visit guitarfetish and take a look at some of the ones with 'hot' or 'fat' as part of the description.
In the meantime, try mucking around with your amp settings a bit.

Hi, Fred. Some guitarists enjoy the process of modding. "Hot rodding" is fun. Others are more focused on outcome...getting the sound you want in the most direct, cost-effective way. So Robbmonster's second tip is one to seriously consider ...your amp is usually just as big an influence as pickups on the sound you create. That and pedals.

So for the direct route to the sound you want, experiment with your amp settings as well as with your guitar settings. If you have a pedal, throw that in to your experiments. As you get closer to your ideal sound, you might try heavier gauge strings.

Or, enjoy the hot rodding process. Either approach will get you there.

Cheers,