The Orange Surf

22 Feb 2019

Whilst building The Clydesdale commission, I built a second Mustang styled guitar as part of testing the build process, which I’ve christened The Orange Surf. This guitar is very different from its sibling, both visually and tonally, and was a place for me to try out some new ideas that make it unique in its own way. And this guitar can now be yours, for £1500 (plus postage) - head over to reverb.com to see the listing.

This guitar channels the surf vibe of the original Mustang and its players: it has the traditional single coil pickups for that classic Mustang tone, using the excellent Bronco pickups from House of Tone Pickups; it has they dynamic vibrato system to provide that trademark surf wobble to your sound, but paired with a top notch Mastery bridge unit and Tusq nut to ensure your guitar remains stable throughout; and it has a bright and vibrant styling to match the music of the time. Construction wise, it has a swamp ash body, making it a wonderfully light guitar, and the neck is maple with a wenge fretboard inlayed with period style clay dots.

Tonally the guitar has a custom 3D printed pickup selector that provides four sound options: bridge, neck, and then bridge+neck in both series and parallel. The selector was designed by me to be easily accessible whilst playing without being in the way when strumming, thanks to a unique long beak on the selector control. The range of sounds are well suited to that classic surf tone on the bridge, to more punk/blur on the neck (top fact: although more commonly associated with the Telecaster, Graham Coxon used a Mustang on bits of the Blur album, and can be seen using one on the video for Beetlebum).

In addition to the guitar itself the price includes a Mighty Beasts guitar strap and a hard case. If you want to see more of the guitar, then you can see this video.

This guitar is up on reverb.com, but if you’re interested to know more then just drop me a note via the contact page here or email (michael at electricflapjack.com) or via the contact page. If you’re in the Cambridge area than I can also arrange a time to try the guitar.