A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Bringing your older offset back to life.
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ThatGuyOverThere
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A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by ThatGuyOverThere » Wed May 22, 2019 7:21 am

Hey guys! Long time lurker, today I have something meaningful to contribute...

So fun story: a friend was in a band with a guy who tried his hand at repairing guitars. He'd amassed quite a collection of old guitars and parts, and one day he decided to gift my friend a bag of old (and frankly pretty gross) Jaguar parts. I'm now in the process of helping figure out what to do with these parts...

See the damage here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxxQHEpocjy/

So I'm here for some collective wisdom! What would be the best way to bring life back to this zombie guitar (if at all possible?).

- the finish on both bodies is WRECKED. I don't know what the story is, it looks like a chisel was used to get it off. The body with more finish does actually look kinda cool as is, but the other I'm thinking of refinishing.
- The neck badly needs a refret, two inlays are missing, and the truss rod is seized. Any suggestions on how to repair this?
- The tuners are more recent reproductions, but they don't fit! Any suggestions for others that would?
- The electronics are non-functional, could potentially have the pickups rewound and restored?

The hope is that I can bring the ugliest Jaguar in the world back to life, and turn the other body into a decent partscaster.

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HNB
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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by HNB » Wed May 22, 2019 7:44 am

I'd rock it as is.
Christopher
Lilith Guitars

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HNB
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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by HNB » Wed May 22, 2019 7:44 am

Other than the frets.
Christopher
Lilith Guitars

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Pacafeliz
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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by Pacafeliz » Wed May 22, 2019 7:46 am

:w00t: :-*
THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!!! Loving it.

...but GOOD GOD did they scrape the finish off with a spoon?! :wtf:
i love delay SO much ...that i procrastinate all the time.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by øøøøøøø » Wed May 22, 2019 8:25 am

maybe it's just the photo flattering it, but I think it looks awesome.

The seized truss rod is probably the hard part. You could try a small drop of penetrating oil on the nut, or a tiny squirt of some teflon lube or even WD-40. Let it sit overnight and then apply another drop (or squirt) and try to loosen the nut, or rock it back and forth.

If you can't loosen the seized nut up through these means, it's probably best to refer to a competent luthier.

In an extreme case, it's POSSIBLE that the fingerboard might have to come off to access the rod. But first things first, try un-seizing the nut first.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by marqueemoon » Wed May 22, 2019 9:30 am

I’d do a pretty minimally invasive thing on the sunburst one.

The white body I’d get more creative with. Vintage 24” scale Fender necks are still affordable-ish, or do a modern replacement. I’d just refrain from doing anything that involves removing any significant wood.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by Zork » Wed May 22, 2019 2:51 pm

HNB wrote:
Wed May 22, 2019 7:44 am
I'd rock it as is.
Damn! I was hoping to be the first to say this! :squint:

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by Con-Tiki! » Wed May 22, 2019 4:51 pm

wow, i love that top one.
do you have any cash to work with?
find a good shop, drop off the neck and have them do whatever it needs. Even if it's a few hundred bucks, that guitar is worth putting some $ into. truss rod repair, couple inlays, and whatever fret work it needs.
the rest of it looks great as-is.
(Christopher, also)
I've been to one World's Fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing i ever heard come out a pair of headphones.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by kimson » Wed May 22, 2019 9:11 pm

As already said, the top one looks fucking awesome.

I'd do whatever it takes to get the neck working, fix the electronics and leave the rest as it is. The pickups are probably ok, it's way more likely that there's a bad/broken connection or a gunked up switch/jack/pot somewhere that needs cleaning or maybe it's just been wired wrong. Any chance of a gut shot?

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by Ceylon » Thu May 23, 2019 7:39 am

Unlike everyone else here, I say go for tons of grain filler and a nice solid re-finish. Something that'll go well with both the beautiful tort guard and the blocks. Black, charcoal frost metallic, Dakota red, hell, why not Aztec gold or Inca silver or something like that? Sure a worn body is cool and all but I feel like this has too much potential to be left as is.
Science Friction burns my fingers
Electricity still lingers

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by PJazzmaster » Fri May 24, 2019 2:44 pm

marqueemoon wrote:
Wed May 22, 2019 9:30 am
Vintage 24” scale Fender necks are still affordable-ish, or do a modern replacement. I’d just refrain from doing anything that involves removing any
↑ This! For example: my favorite jaguar neck is actually a duo sonic II neck :)

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by solfege » Fri May 24, 2019 5:34 pm

PJazzmaster wrote:
Fri May 24, 2019 2:44 pm
marqueemoon wrote:
Wed May 22, 2019 9:30 am
Vintage 24” scale Fender necks are still affordable-ish, or do a modern replacement. I’d just refrain from doing anything that involves removing any
↑ This! For example: my favorite jaguar neck is actually a duo sonic II neck :)
Mine's a 78 Musicmaster neck.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by ThatGuyOverThere » Sat May 25, 2019 5:20 am

Further update! I checked the pots on both - on the more complete body they’re from the 49th week of 1965, on the naked one from the 34th week of 1966. So not 70s as I presumed. Neck date seems to have entirely faded away sadly.

In the neck pocket of the naked body appears to be a faded green stamp of the word SPECIAL (or something to that effect). Any clues to what that meant?

I’ll try and post some gut shots when I can. Don’t want to overcrowd my Instagram feed... haha.

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by mgeek » Sat May 25, 2019 12:09 pm

The one with the neck on it has so much patina...normally when people say 'i'd rock that as is' on here I think it looks like a POS but that looks genuinely cool, and I would just leave it.

How do frets get like that? Is there any sign that it was deliberate? I guess it'd be cool to have a fretless bit on the b string for sitary or middle eastern kinda effects.

RE Tuners: Assuming the space is for klusons, back in the day klusons all came with much more backplate area- a symmetrical version of the E tuners if that makes sense, and Fender ground them down to fit the smaller headstocks. I've had to do that occasionally with modern repros. Perfectly acceptable to take a file to the kluson replicas and shave half a mm off here and there to get them to fit

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Re: A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Post by øøøøøøø » Sun May 26, 2019 12:54 pm

ThatGuyOverThere wrote:
Sat May 25, 2019 5:20 am

In the neck pocket of the naked body appears to be a faded green stamp of the word SPECIAL (or something to that effect). Any clues to what that meant?
As I understand it, sometimes guitars were true custom orders--true custom color, for instance, or some other unusual feature. Sometimes guitars were made specifically for well-known or high-visibility players, or sometimes particularly "good" examples were set aside to give to artists and what might now be called "influencers" within the industry. Sometimes guitars were made for trade shows (like NAMM) in flashy finishes.

In any of the above cases, they might get one or more "special" stamps on the guitar-- neck heel, neck pocket, pickup cavity, or even back of headstock (I've only seen the latter spot once, on an Electric XII). Sometimes the stamps were red or black; I've never seen a green one, but that's not implausible in the least. Fender was definitely using green ink as early as '69, possibly even a few scattered examples as early as '67, so nothing's impossible.

Sometimes you might also see "E.S." denoting a similar thing, stamped under the pickguard, impressed right into the wood.

If you have a "special" guitar, I'm not sure it raises the value, but it DEFINITELY won't hurt. And it hints that, at least at some point in its life, that example was exceptional in some way (either with a celebrity association, a custom one-off finish, or just having been deemed to be of superior quality).

If it were mine, I'd be scouring that naked body for traces of what might've been the original color, just in case it was one of those ultra-rare metal flakes or one-off colors. That might be worth trying to restore.

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