The new-gear announcements are coming fast and furious at this year's Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California.
As always, Fender has introduced a plethora of new models of guitars and amps to heat things up in the middle of January. One of the coolest -- or perhaps coolest looking -- is the new Kurt Cobain Mustang Guitar. Guitar World paid a visit to the NAMM booth yesterday and got to check out a few of these guitars in person, including a very nice Fiesta Red model.
What's particularly cool is that this is the same guitar Cobain has slung over his shoulder in the 1991 music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which you can check out below.
From Fender: Kurt 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.
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.
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Damian is Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World magazine. In past lives, he was GW’s managing editor and online managing editor. He's written liner notes for major-label releases, including Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'The Complete Epic Recordings Collection' (Sony Legacy) and has interviewed everyone from Yngwie Malmsteen to Kevin Bacon (with a few memorable Eric Clapton chats thrown into the mix). Damian, a former member of Brooklyn's The Gas House Gorillas, was the sole guitarist in Mister Neutron, a trio that toured the U.S. and released three albums. He now plays in two NYC-area bands.
