The Fender Swinger

The Fender Swinger is one of my favorite rare vintage Fenders for its cool looks and for the great story behind this odd model. I’ve only seen one artist playing on it and once in real life when I joined Valentijn when he bought his Fender Electric XII from a die hard Fender surf guitar collector. In the Talking Head movie Stop Making Sense, you can see Tina Weymouth playing it on one or two songs. As you can see, I stole the shape of the headstock for my Springtime Guitar and the other guitars I make from the Swinger.

Fender also made the Fender Maverick with also a weird adapted recut body. A totally different guitar, but the story behind is the pretty much the same.

The pic below is a bit nerdish, but funny if you are aware only around 300 copies of this instrument exist. Owning 4 copies all in different colors is not an easy job to manage. The dark blue one is especcially rare. Not many blue Fenders exist. Most of the Swingers I’ve seen on pics are red or white. I’ve seen prices on E-bay and pics from a Japanese dealer for around $2400.- in 2004, if I remember well. The Musicmaster which is pretty equal regarding the pickup, bridges etc. was than around 1/3 of the price. Perhaps a good trick for sneaky dealers to modify the body shape and refinish it.

Description

The Fender Swinger was manufactured in 1969 as a way to use up unsold parts. Specifically, the body was made from a drastically reshaped "Bass V" body; the neck was from the unpopular 22.5" short-scale Mustang neck with a cut-down headstock; the electronics, control plate and slightly reshaped pickguard were from the Musicmaster.

Neck: maple with rosewood fretboard, 22.5-inch scale, 21 frets, 6-on-one-side Kluson tuners with white plastic buttons, truss-rod adjuster at body end, one string guide, plastic nut. Most necks are dated 1966.

Body: offset double-cutaway with scoop cut out of base, alder or ash, available in various colors (White, Black, Daphne Blue, Lake Placid Blue, Dakota Red and Candy Apple Red. Other original colors probably exist. Competition Orange has even been reported.)

Pickup: one angled Musicmaster/Duosonic/Mustang style single-coil in the neck position.

Controls: Musicmaster/Duosonic/Mustang-style control plate with black plastic tone/volume knobs and jack.

Pickguard: 12-screw white pearl or tortoiseshell laminated plastic (slightly recontoured Musicmaster design).

Bridge: 3-saddle Musicmaster/Duosonic bridge/tailpiece.

The "Fender" logo was applied to the headstock under the finish and is usually found intact, but the "Swinger" decal or sticker was applied over the finish. Today, most Swingers are missing the "Swinger" label. This could be because these labels have peeled or fallen off over the years, or it may be that they were never applied in the first place.

According to former Fender employee Virgilio Simoni, only 250 to 300 Swingers were ever built and the Swinger was never featured in Fender's literature. Many guides and articles refer to the Swinger as the "Musiclander" or "Arrow". In fact, some books emphasize the Musiclander name first, and the Swinger name second.

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