A REAL mess of a Jaguar (or two)

Bringing your older offset back to life.
User avatar
ThatGuyOverThere
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 69
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:23 am

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

Post by ThatGuyOverThere » Mon May 27, 2019 6:54 am

øøøøøøø wrote:
Sun May 26, 2019 12:54 pm
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.
Interesting - the body was clearly sunburst, I don't think anybody would have refinished it that way so I guess it was originally that. It'd be super hard to trace the history of it, the previous owner has since passed away. I don't know much about what makes one slab of wood sound different from another, but based on tapping each of these bodies, the "special" one does indeed sound more resonant. I'm curious to find out if that makes for a better sounding Jaguar now...

Moving some of the good switches from the white "special" body, I've managed to get the electronics working on the more complete one. Now I'm on the hunt for a decent neck while I work on the original neck. Any recommendations? I was thinking of finding a Johnny Marr Jag neck from Stratosphere, but if someone else has a suggestion from elsewhere then I'm all ears!

User avatar
øøøøøøø
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 5984
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 8:26 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

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

Post by øøøøøøø » Mon May 27, 2019 1:36 pm

If it was a sunburst, chances are it had something else that distinguished it--perhaps it was a good example that went to a high-profile artist, perhaps it had a particularly nice-looking sunburst and was to be used for a trade show display or catalog photo shoot, etc.

I wasn't at Fender back in the day, (or even born, clearly), so I can only speculate... but it's not hard to imagine other scenarios--what if an important dealer had an order for a sunburst Jag and they didn't have one ready to ship out that day? They might've made one "special." Etc.

Post Reply