creepingnet's Music Gear Setup

Ah, the Fender Music Master, the little one-pickup wonder Fender introduced in 1956 as a 22.5" Scale student guitar, that managed to hang on the longest of any of the original Fullerton run guitars.

While I own a 1971 model, I'm kind of also reviewing Music Masters in general.

It seems when Fender kept producing the Music Master through the second generation and third generations of Student models from 1965-1981, these guitars were default to a 22.5" scale or 24" scale 22 fret vintage maple neck in the thinnest "A" Nut width, making these the skinniest necks Fender made, and also making these the preferred neck of Nirvana guitarist Kurt Cobain (his Jag-Stang and Mustangs were all based on these same necks as they were also used on the Duo-Donic II, Mustang, and Bronco as well as the Music Master, it's just on at least some of those other models, it appears one had a choice of neck width).

The bodies are typically made of Ash, Alder, Poplar, or I've heard reports of Mustangs having fabled Mahogany bodies (not sure why Fender would be using Mahogany, but then I DID know they made acoustic guitars too at that time - which I think everyone forgets). Mine has a poplar body.

The one I have is tricked out and modded, the only original 1971 parts are the body and neck. IT started off an ex-Grunge band guitar of some sort probably used by some Seattle grunge scenester decades ago and then lost in a closet before handing it over to the guitar store to use for parts.

Stripping off the paint reveals quite a bit of Bondo was used on this body to level-out the finish at finishing time. It's original color was Dakota red, then over it's lifetime it was repainted black, white, sort of a darkened vintage-white, and then some kind of odd jade-on-foam-green sort of color, and it must have been badly done because you could see where it had stickers once upon a time.

Someone routed it for an extra switch, probably because a second pickup was added at some point, a common modification to the Music Master as stock it lacks a bridge pickup, which in certain genres is extremely limiting.

I assembled this guitar from the cast-off body and neck in 2014 after sitting for 3 years unfinished but strung up and playable at least with a Fender Tornado string through bridge (another butchering a previous owner did was drill it for a string through Stratocaster bridge). I finished it for a total of $9.40 in parts including the Tap Plastics orange acrylic pickguard. The stickers were stocking stuffers from the previous x-mas.

In the bridge I have a Peavey P12 humbucker from a 80's Peavey Falcon that weighs in at around 14.6K Ohms resistance, and in the neck a super-tall Strat single coil from a 1993 Washburn MG-43. Everything dumps into a single 500K Audio pot and 3-way switch, with a 3-way series/parallel/split switch for the humbucker, allowing me to get a wide array of Mustang type sounds. Intiially it had a home made pickup in the bridge to test an idea with hum cancellation that kinda-sorfta worked but I have put on the back burner for awhile to focus on other projects.

With the original home-built pickup the guitar premiered with Zombie Jihad at Hempfest 2014 and was quite loud. There's a video of it being used through a Bugera 333XL head into a Mesa Boogie 8-ohm 4X12 on the seely stage playing a Led Zepplin cover.

After leaving ZJ the guitar was modified for my current (as of this writing) 90's cover band as a Nirvana Style guitar for doing Nirvana covers. Bye bye hempmaster - hello Kurtmaster.

So far this is one of my favorite hardtails, only eclipsed by the Hondo Paul Dean II.