Fender introduces Kurt Cobain Mustang guitar

January 17, 2012

Cobain Mustang in Fender Booth

So you’ve been asking for it for years and years and Fender has finally made it available. The latest NAMM press release has recently come out introducing the Kurt Cobain Mustang. (Also reported in the jag-stang.com forum and by many sites inc musicradar and premierguitar)

With the Kurt Cobain Jaguar released last year and now the Kurt Cobain Mustang Fender has made available both the guitars jag-stang.com visitors have been asking for for many years. While the Jaguar retails for $1299.99 US it is expected the Mustang will retail around $999.

Press release and guitar images copied below.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Jan. 16, 2012) — When Kurt Cobain hit the stage, it was very often with a Mustang® guitar—an enigmatic anti-hero figure with an esoteric anti-hero instrument. It’s with great pride then that Fender introduces the Kurt Cobain Mustang, which evokes the man, the band, the sound and the times, and gives an authentically crafted nod to one of the most unlikely guitars to ever find itself at the center of a musical maelstrom.

Cobain liked Mustangs a lot. For one, he preferred offbeat guitars that didn’t cost zillions of dollars, and the Mustang certainly fit those two criteria. Also, being somewhat physically diminutive himself, he liked to perform live with slightly more diminutive guitars, like Fender Mustang and Jaguar® guitars, which better fit his hands and his reach.

See for yourself—go back and watch the famous 1991 video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and there heis and there it is slung over his shoulder. Or think back to when you saw them on the ’93-’94 In Utero tour, when he seldom went onstage with anything but a Mustang. Quite often and especially later on, Mustang guitars were a big part of what Kurt Cobain was all about, musically.

Inspired by his arsenal of modded guitars, the new Fender Kurt Cobain Mustang takes you back there, with highly distinctive features including an angled single-coil Mustang neck pickup and ferocious Seymour Duncan® JB humbucking bridge pickup mounted directly to the body, dual on-off/phase in-out switches for each pickup, a polyester-finished alder body and an Adjusto-Matic™ bridge with dynamic vibrato tailpiece.

Other features include the classic 24” Mustang scale length, C-shaped maple neck with urethane finish, 7.25”-radius rosewood fingerboard with 22 vintage-style frets and vintage-style ivory dot inlays, four-ply pickguard (Aged White Pearl on Fiesta Red and Dark Lake Placid Blue with stripe models; Tortoiseshell on Sonic Blue model), master volume and tone controls, vintage-style tuners, and chrome hardware. Finish options include Fiesta red, Sonic Blue and Dark Lake Placid Blue with stripe. Available in right and left-handed models. For more information, go to Fender.com.

Cobain Mustang in Fender Booth

Above from Fender Japan blog: fenderjapan.co.jp/blog/?p=770

Kurt Cobain Fender Mustang