lamp said: It's not about the scale, Jaguars have 24 inch scale as well.
yes but the musicmaster/duos, and their "student" classification, were around before the jaguar. the shorter scale on the jag could have been due to many reasons, but the neck profile wasn't as small as a mm/duo even though the scale was the same. the mm/duo/stang neck is clearly designed for smaller hands, and at the time it debuted, was fender's shortest scale length.
i really do believe that fenders "top-of-the-line" tag for the jaguar was justified in their eyes by all those switches and chrome (this was the 60's, that stuff was a salespersons' bread and butter), and the diverse wiring scheme.
it's all a question of advancing technology. are the mustang and musicmaster/duo considered student guitars because fender said they were? or are we having this conversation because we aren't students and we like them? i'm going to go with the latter.
fender created small scale, small bodied budget instruments (for little people, i.e. kids) in the 60's using the technology they had, which still required more handwork and US-manufacture parts than your modern squier, and the non-existance of accurate generic overseas hardware required that simpler hardware be invented (does the mustang require as much routing and as many parts as a strat bridge?). the original musicmaster has very little features, the duo had an extra pickup, and the mustang is just a phase II duo with a weird and impractical vibrato attatched.
i'd classify it as an outdated student guitar, even though artist-use, the vintage guitar market and the comparably-shoddy budget guitars of today make it seem otherwise. lets not get too defensive, the guitar is what it is and if we like it that's all that matters.
the marketing applies solely to the jag-stang only in my opinion... i agree with jager in that referring to a 90's signature model fender as a 'student guitar' would be detrimental to it's credibility and, as such, a poor marketing decision. additionally, a re-issue of the mustang with a price competitive to a strat from the same factory would not sell well if it continued to be referred to as a student guitar.
they put modern budget strats and such to shame, but they were still the lowest-end fenders for their time.
