Offset detectives, did I find a prototype Ryan Jarman Signature Model at the pawn shop?

[spingo]

Album: https://imgur.com/a/cGEIi1a

Hi all - this is my first offset (and my first post here, hallo!) and it vexes me. I'm not sure exactly what it is. The EUR-issue Ryan Jarman Signature "Mus-Uar" comes in Burgundy Mist (run of 150, supposedly),

http://www.soundaffectsmusic.com/-c114/ ... mist-p5509

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKRWzkcAZLN/?tagged=musuar

and I guess they made him one in Fiesta Red.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ58W2CAHi- ... d=thecribs

Mine is seafoam green and has the Mustang bridge they apparently used on the prototypes before going to a Fender Adjust-o-Matic. (His brother posted that, I believe.)

https://78.media.tumblr.com/317e2e17cc6 ... 1_1280.jpg

It's hard to see in the photos, but the bridge screws up the pickup/string alignment. The trem arm was missing, so I got a replacement.) The s/n is S1503040003 and there's A70945 inside the pickup cavity.

I'm in Scottsdale AZ, and there's a Fender office here. This board shows up in a lot of Google results, so I wanted to ask here.
Did someone take one home? What is this thing?

[spingo]

I'm not sure if I like it yet - it just feels so different from the Teles, SGs, etc. I'm used to. That could be because it was pretty much completely un-set up when I got it, so I'm doing my best to dial it in.

[Acidhouse]

Seems to me that it came that way from the factory. Maybe you just got a Wonka Golden Ticket. Very cool.

[RIORIO]

Please send to me for further analysis

[spingo]

I decided to try shimming the neck and holy cow, it's like 10x more playable.

And Acidhouse, looks like you're right: it doesn't seem to be refinished at all.

https://imgur.com/DmkQxbG

And RIORIO: newwwwwwp.

[timtam]

Mine is seafoam green and has the Mustang bridge they apparently used on the prototypes before going to a Fender Adjust-o-Matic.

Looks like it's not the standard Mustang bridge. It's similar but has saddles with height adjustment, like some Tele 6-saddle bridges. It appears to be this one that has cropped up on a number of offset models, most recently the Player series jags and jazzmasters ....
https://reverb.com/au/item/1504639-fend ... 0081239001

[spingo]

It appears to be this one

Yup! And if you zoom in on this prototype with this bridge and not the final one they picked, you can see the bridge throws off the spacing for the pole pieces, which was mentioned somewhere.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/317e2e17cc6 ... 1_1280.jpg

Mine:
https://imgur.com/AIw3XTb
(The G string was buzzing on the intonation screw so I put a little folded over aluminum tape under it for now.)

I want to see how comfortable I get with it before I mod anything. I have no real need for a kill switch and would change out the bridge and the humbucker. (Or keep the bridge and just get something bladey where the pole pieces don't matter much?) I play cleanish more than filthy and probably want something more chiming, or a Jaguar? Tele? Strat? pickup in a humbucker adapter plate, etc. I have a set of GFS Dream 180s with no home, but maybe something more like a Retrotron?

But if this is kind of a one-off, like it's looking, I don't wanna turf possible resale value (or have to rewire it twice, frankly--I switch pickups OK but kind of hate it). If it's worth what I paid for it, sure, but if it's some kind of rare bird, I dunno!

I can only find one past US sale of the official model, on Reverb, so who knows what it's actually worth. Why can't these things be easy? The detective work's been fun, at least. Summer in Phoenix is pretty slow.

[Stephen_42]

I'd say don't mod at all. It seems to be a prototype Jarman, and that's insanely cool. You own a little bit of Fender / Cribs history, which definitely isn't something you can say about 99.99% of guitars that get churned out.

[vistavision]

This guitar is f'n incredible. That thing is made to be in Surf Green like that! I would like to verbally berate whoever at Fender/Squier didn't make this a regular run guitar. But we sure do have the Contemporary Active Jazzmaster in Surf Pearl we all asked for, amirite? Grrrr.

[TeenageShutdown!]

I could just imagine the not for sale price this would be posted for on eBay. Nice guitar. If this is indeed a prototype, please don’t mod it.

[trinitrotoluene]

I think that you will enjoy this guitar even more with a Mastery bridge. Given that yours has the Squier type Mustang bridge, the standard body thimbles should already be in place for the Mastery to drop in without any modifications needed.

I had a Mastery bridge installed in my Mus-uar but had to use Staytrem conversion thimbles to avoid the process of filling the holes left by the adjustmatic bridge mounts, and then drilling new holes for the standard Fender thimbles. This was absolutely worth it.

[Pacafeliz]

...hopefully the Jarmans will chime in here again. That's such a beautiful guitar!!!

[dinosaurkale->]

ask the man himself...maybe hit up his IG

[Jarman]

Holy - fucking - shit. Someone just hit me up about this at home.

This is crazy. Whilst we were using and road-testing the prototypes for our signature guitars (before official release) we met up with Fender at SXSW 2015 and they showed us an alternate DuPont colour chart that they were going to be using on a run of 50’s strats to be released later that year.

One of the colours on this chart was "apple green", and we spoke with Fender that night about releasing the musuar in this colour as a standard alternate to the burgundy mist guitar. They agreed it was a good idea and went away to start building some in this colour for us.

Later on in the year, we hear back that the Chinese factory had been building these, but couldn't quite get the colour mix correct for that specific finish and the idea is shelved. So, I believe that it's quite possible that there are a few of these out there in varying shades of green.

Fast forward to early 2016, and we hear from Fender that our guitars are going to be the final signature guitars released (for the time being at least...) ahead of Squier streamlining their range to concentrate on specific models. And so our guitars were just released in the one finish each.

This apple green guitar was supposed to be shipped to us at some point, but then the trail went cold after our guitars were released to the public and we subsequently went away on tour and got busy with that and studio stuff etc. Must have just fallen through the cracks after the project was completed and in the stores.

I can’t believe you actually have it! We have had about a million conversations about that guitars whereabouts over the last couple of years!

[vistavision]

I'm in Scottsdale AZ, and there's a Fender office here.

Well, actually, Scottsdale is Fender's corporate headquarters.