It was introduced in 1964 as the basis of a major redesign of Fender's student models, the Musicmaster and Duo-Sonic.

Its short scale, combined with a relatively low cost and extremely direct vibrato arm, made the Mustang a cult guitar in the 1990s.

Before that, its low cost and marketing as a student guitar made it an obvious candidate for aftermarket upgrades, particularly pickup changes and also amateur finishes.

In 1990, Fender reissued the Mustang, largely as a result of the vintage movement prevalent at the time.

The model features an offset Mustang body shape and a 24-inch scale neck, but with humbucking pickups and a hard-tail Stratocaster bridge.

Instead of having two single-coil pickups, it had a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker in the bridge and a normal Mustang single coil in the neck.

In 2012, Squier released a new Mustang in the Vintage Modified series, with similar specifications to those of the original version, but using more modern materials.

They have a string-through-body hardtail 'Strat' bridge (no vibrato system as was found on previous Mustangs), with vintage-like bent-steel saddles.

[11] In 2018, Fender introduced an American Performer variant of the Mustang with an updated version of the original style vibrato system, Tim Shaw designed Yosemite pickups, and a three way selector switch instead of the original’s on-off and phase switches above the pickups.

[12][13] The Mustang has two angled single-coil pickups, each with an adjacent on-off-on switch, and a master tone and volume control.

As with many student guitars, aftermarket pickup additions and changes are commonly found in many vintage examples.

The floating bridge concept is common to the Fender floating vibrato developed for the Jazzmaster, but on the Mustang the saddles have only a single string slot, while on other Fender guitars there are multiple slots to allow limited adjustment of the string spacing.

The tailpiece was unique when introduced and remains the most unusual feature of the Mustang; Only the Jag-Stang and Fender Custom (Maverick) share this particular mechanism.

However, Fender further notes in sales literature of the time that custom colors were not available on Mustangs or other student models of guitar.

As such, Daphne Blue, Olympic White, and Dakota or Fiesta Red were never officially offered as Mustang colors.

Body and arm contours were added, and the guitars were now offered in several "Competition Colors” for the first time.

This differential yellow over blue effect presents as a purple hue over these areas of the body and headstock.

Competition Mustangs are the only original Fender guitars to be produced with these "racing stripes" which make them very collectible.

Later Japanese reissues have been made available in a wide variety of color schemes, many with matching headstocks or in variations never seen in the US.

The 2016 Offset Series instruments come in Black, Olive, Olympic White, Torino Red and Silver, with Shell Pink and 2-Color Sunburst being released the following year.