Fender American Performer Mustang Vintage White RW

What we say:

Fender’s American Performer range brings an excellent selection of the most famous Fender designs, made in the USA, to players at great prices. Each Fender American Performer guitar has been specially designed to give gigging guitarists the tones and tools they need for excellent, high quality performances.

Special design features, custom wound pickups and fresh new finishes make this range stand out as one for players of all stripes to get behind. Fender USA quality at a budget friendly price: sounds perfect to us!

The Mustang is one of those ‘statement’ guitars: it’s defiantly anti-shred sensibility has made it a first choice for Alternative singer-songwriters and iconoclastic players form a wide range of disparate genres. Fender have wisely included in on the American Performer Range, accurately understanding the Mustang’s huge appeal.

For the American Performer Mustang, Fender have retained much of what makes the Mustang stand out in the first place, namely: the distinctively short 24” scale length, the idiosyncratic bridge/tremolo system and the classic styling.

Mustangs generally tend to have two single coil pickups and these are present and correct here as a set of freshly designed Yosemite models. These are hand-wound units, made for plenty of jangle and sparkle. They sound great with gain too, giving out a raucous voice full of spite and venom.

Fender have also included their excellent Greasebucket Tone circuit. The Greasebucket is basically a tone control that does its job properly: turning back the knob removes treble frequencies without ruining every other part of your sound like some standard tone circuits do! You’ll find yourself using the Tone knob a lot more than before when you have the Greasebucket in there!

That vintage bridge is authentic to the classic model. Players of other Fender Offset guitars often change out their bridges in favour of the Mustang’s elegant and inherently more stable design so it’s a no-brainer to keep it for this American Performer edition.

The biggest concession to modernity here is the spec of the neck. As we’ve said, Fender have wisely keep the short 24” scale (it does make a huge difference to the way you play) but have married this to a Modern C profile neck and a 9.5” radius fingerboard with Jumbo frets. We think most Fender are on the money here: making the guitar as playable as possible is more important than vintage verisimilitude, especially as part of a contemporary range like the American Performer.

This great Mustang sounds, looks and plays brilliantly, with the right blend of old school charm and modern day efficiency. A number of great finishes are available, too. This one is a superb Vintage White.