anyone know anything about these?

[donnyII]

Has anyone ever encountered a 60's "servicemen" jag copy? Some people say they are killer and some say they are pieces of garb. Thoughts?

[mjet]

They're great - as wall hangings.

[zhivago]

I've never actualy played one, but the word on the street is that they aren't good guitars...some don't have truss rods either :/

[fullerplast]

I know a bit about them. I actually contributed to an article written by Michael Wright in his "Different Strummer" feature in VG magazine. I lived in the Philippines for 5.5 years in the 80s, and they were still making them. I'd like to say that I bought I ton of offsets... but I didn't. I examined quite a few though, along with $trats, Teles, LPs, SGs, etc. At that time, they were even copying the L6S and Flying V. I bought a V, and later traded it in at a pawn shop (in the US) for a 1960 Duo-Sonic (that started my love for vintage Fenders).

I never saw a Jazzmaster, maybe they were out of production at that time. I know that they did make them, pre-CBS type. I've seen lots of Jags in person. Most of the best ones I've seen were based on a '65 with binding/dots. I have a neck that came from eBay, but it's unbound. The headstock shape is really accurate. I started to strip it and sure enough, it's dark brown mahogany under the cream color! I just picked it up for fun. I don't know what I'll do with it. Funny, the $trat copies were 70s models, with 3 bolt necks and large headstock. Why the $trat copy was 70s and the Jags/JMs were 60s, I don't know.

I visited one of the "factories" once, in San Fernando, Pampanga. The family name was Lumanog.  It wasn't what you would picture as a factory.The amazing thing was that they actually tooled up to copy so many different guitars. It's pretty amazing, really. And some of the Gibsons were pretty intricate with binding, inlays, etc.

No, they're generally not good guitars. But there were several small companies (families) offering them and the quality and authenticity varied widely, meaning some were much more realistic than others, and better built. Some were built using an original as a template to copy, and some were built using a picture and turned out being an interpretation of what the builder thought he saw. The bodies and necks are mahogany, the necks were bleached or whitewashed somehow to appear maple. As John said, they didn't have a truss rod, which was their main downfall. And regardless of the level of overall quality, the electronics and hardware are junk.

All that being said, I would personally like to have one of the better examples (in original condition) to have as a novelty. And I wouldn't mind having a thrashed one to modify, if it could be bought cheap. It would be fun to throw a decent neck on one and hotrod the electronics. The trouble is, some people pay like $400 +/- for these on ebay, and there's just no way... They were about $75-100  brand new. At that price, even in the 80s, they were fun to mess around with.

I went back there in 2002, and went to the shop district. The shops were all still there, but the copies were mostly gone. There were some Strat copies, but not like before. They didn't seem to try to copy them exactly like they did before. And oddly enough, there were Jackson and Kramer copies. I saw alot of Ovation acoustic copies, and bought one for $50. It wasn't too bad, but everything they make needs some upgrading to be halfway decent.

I'm going back for three weeks in Nov-Dec this year. I know I'll go looking, but am not hopeful to find anything good. I can't forsee them starting up again without the US military bases there, with the demand they created. It was a unique product that lasted from the Vietnam era up through the late 80s, and now they're gone. They were making those for at least 25 years, no wonder so many keep surfacing!

[sookwinder]

Doug:

I'm going back for three weeks in Nov-Dec this year.

I hope you are going to keep a blog , daily updated, of your trip back for us to feel envious about 

[zhivago]

take some pics of the shop district for us!

I'd love to see what it looks like

[fullerplast]

I will take the photos, but you can probably picture exactly what it looks like from your travels and/or the media. It's odd, I've been all over the world (courtesy of my Uncle Sam) and every third-world downtown section looks pretty much the same, from Latin America to the Middle East and Asia. I don't mean this as a put down, just stating an observation. It's funny to me that the cultures are so different yet so similar in some ways. 

[sookwinder]

Doug, you are so right.... when I was in Shanghai last year, I was walking through some of the "backroad" store areas where the locals traded.  I was listening to my mp3 player so couldn't hear the language being spoken...  turned a corner and I could have sworn I was in the back roads of Kowloon Hong Kong.  Then when I was buying some food from a roadside stall, it could have been the same as the areas in Thailand I do work in.  Cultures different, language different, but people in the lower levels of society all must do the same thing to earn a crust... road side food stalls, cheap clothing manufacturer (slave labour), fake watches, clean shoes etc etc  (not to mention the bar girls and all that goes with that)

What is interesting is that the middle class (and the rich)  of all of these societies "never see" the poor, except when they're down town buying the cheap DVDs

[vintage-tone]

I ve seen in personn 2 "Pinas" Jazzmasters and it's sadly the only 2 I've ever seen. I m sure there are some out there tho.
One was a CAR matching headstock with bindings and dots ( the CAR was a solid metalic red tho unlike the real one ) and I must say that it was a pretty good copy, one of the best "scaled" i ve seen, most likely done from a real one.
It had a truss rod bullet screw just like a real one but no truss rod hehehe  ! the body was some kind of some kind of mahogany and the neck was some unknown wood ( to me anyways ) that vaguely ressembled maple / pine but with a grenish hue, bleeched to death.
One of the funny detail was that the pick ups were stratoide like but with a big Jazzmaster plastic cover, the tuners were unknown aftermarket with the wrong shape but handgraved with kinda "kluson deluxe" markings. The logo was hand painted.
The second one I ve seen was a grotesque copy with a VERY distorted shape, probly made from an already distorted picture.

for a guitar with no truss rod, I must say the CAR was a very decent playing and sounding instrument ( after a refret and a major set up ), the other one was perfect for playback, display and giggles ...

off topic I ve also owned a copy of a Dove and a J-200. I wish i would have kept those or at least pictures of em    Those guitars are really interesting, be carefull tho nowadays they pop out here and there and everywhere and people are trying to sell them for an awful lot of money...
it's the same story as the "selmer" custom colors... Now every refin is a "selmer" and every junk yard copy is a part of fender or gibson's history and been thru the Vietnam war ... At least that's what scammers want you to believe 

[fullerplast]

They must have discontinued the Jazzmasters before my time. I wonder where they all are today? Funny, they were still making the Jaguar when I was there, the opposite of what happened with the real thing.

I've never seen a Pinoy Jag with the fake Klusons you saw on the Jazzmasters. The only ones I've seen all had six-on-a-plate 'open gear' tuners, but the knobs looked like Klusons. I'd like to see a set of those fake ones!   ;D

Another weird feature of most of the Jags I've seen is that the screws holding on the neckplate were only holding the plate, not the neck. When you took them out, the plate came off to reveal four countersunk bolts in a narrower pattern underneath. I wonder why? The only thing I can think of is that they just didn't have access to long screws? But why would that be? You would think they could have made some, they made everything else....

[fullerplast]

Here's one now!

Looks like one of the "better" ones.

The seller is either a scammer or completely ignorant. She said "it's a real vintage jaguar, I think '62". I asked if it had a truss rod, and she said "what's a truss rod?" Kind of funny from someone who has 'too many guitars'...

I told he I was pretty sure it's fake and advised her to mention the possibility in the auction, or have someone knowledgeable check it out. We'll see what she does.

[NickD]

I would say she's just ignorant - there is no punctuation whatsoever in her description

I can't see well enough to tell whether it is fake or real - what tipped you off ( I haven't seen all that many vintage Jags in person either tbh)

[fullerplast]

For one, the suspicious numbers she gives. Then, on a closer look at her bad pictures;  the pickups are shaped wrong and don't have a claw, the tuners look like they have no "saf-T-hole", funny yellow neck, headstock shape, wide dot spacing on the 12th, and the upper control plate looks like a thin sheet of aluminum on top of plastic. All these things are typical of those.

I asked for better pics 2 days ago, but she only answers questions whose answers don't reveal anything.  The first time I emailed her with an easy question, she responded right away. The next say, I axed another easy question and she responded right away. Then I got a more specific and detailed, and politely told her that it might be fake... she hasn't responded. Two more emails... no response. I'm pretty sure she knows I'm onto her and is ignoring me. I quit pestering her.

I just hate to see somebody get hosed. She obviously is not going to change the description or provide any better pics.

[donnyII]

Her description looks like a 5 year old wrote it. I hope no one gets fooled into buying that piece of garb.

[fullerplast]

I finally got a reply from her:

their is no truss rod their is a number 6

I was right, it's bogus.   

She still hasn't amended her auction though...