The Fender Swinger was a limited run short scale guitar made in 1969 when then CBS run corporate management came up with the idea of using their existing parts inventory to build a guitar. The idea was to combine the guitar bodies left over from the failed Fender Bass V project with excess parts from the slow selling Musicmaster II, particularly the 22.5 inch scale neck. Parts from other discontinued projects, such the Fender Maverick, were also included.

The Swinger was to be another member of Fender’s student line of guitars. In addition to the short, 22.5 inch, scale rosewood fretboard neck, the guitar was equipped with one single coil pickup in the neck position, much like the Musicmaster. The bridge was fixed. The guitar was produced in Dakota Red, Black, Candy Apple Red, Olympic White, Sonic Blue and Lake Placid Blue.

The unusual thing about this guitar is how the headstock shaped. It has a distinctive arrow shape and is why it’s often called the Fender Arrow rather than the official name, Swinger. Some marketing material also referred to this model as the Fender Musiclander, further indicating how much at a loss the CBS marketers were in positioning this guitar in the marketplace. As a result of disjointed promotion and the overall obvious cheapness of the patched together guitar it did not sell well. It is estimated that only about 300 of these guitars ever made it into the hands of guitarists.

One notable Fender Swinger player was Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads. She played her Swinger often in live concerts and the guitar is seen in the concert movie Stop Making Sense.

Because of the very limited production the Swinger has become somewhat of a collectors item and it’s rare to see one up for sale. As of this date, there hasn’t been an exact reissue of this guitar although there have been some other Fender guitars that borrow somewhat from its look.

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3. Fender Musicmaster

The Fender Musicmaster was a single pickup companion to the Fender Duosonic. It actually was shipped to stores a few months before the Duo-sonic back in 1956. Word has it that the reason for this was a shortage of pickups and, as a single pickup model, more units of the Musicmaster could be shipped in time for the Christmas  buying season. This guitar, along with the Duosonic, was the first guitar of Fender’s student guitar line.

In these years, the body style and other appointments were the same as the Duosonic with the exception of the single pickup based electronics. The body rout on the original Musicmaster would allow it to be converted to a Duosonic if one replaced the pickguard and electronics. This was somewhat like how an Esquire could be converted to a Telecaster with a simple upgrade.

Unlike the Esquire, Fender’s other single pickup model, the Fender Musicmaster had its one single coil pickup in the neck to middle position. This position was kind of limited tonally as you might expect. It lacks the spank of the bridge pickup and the tonality of a neck pickup making it a bit of a compromise.

As with the Duosonic, the Musicmaster originally was equipped with a 22.5 inch scale length neck with 21 frets and a 1 5/8 inch nut. Early models that were made between 1956 to 1959 had a truss rod skunk stripe of walnut down the back of the neck. The neck profile was the standard Fender ‘V’ profile and, as is the case with other Fender guitars of this era, it varied between a soft and hard ‘V’.

Changes to the Musicmaster over the years followed the changes to the Duosonic, both in color and fretboard wood.

In 1964 the Musicmaster II was introduced at the same time as the Duo-Sonic II and Mustang. The red, white and blue colors and the 24 inch scale length along with a restyling of the body were introduced at this time. In 1969, the Duosonic was discontinued. However, the Musicmaster continued to be listed in the Fender product catalog, in both 22.5 inch scale and 24 inch scale models until 1982. Availability of this guitar was limited and it only saw a few actual production runs between 1969 and 1982.

The Musicmaster hasn’t yet been reissued as a direct copy of the vintage guitar. However, a guitar by this name was released in the late 1990′s in the Squier Vista series. This guitar featured a single, splitable, bridge humbucker and it did not have tone control.

Related posts:

1. Fender Swinger
2. Fender Mustang
3. Fender Duosonic II