Fender 60th Anniversary Jaguar
Grabbed from Fender’s website. The colour is that beautiful.
In all my years of playing and collecting, I’ve never had a Jaguar. I have a couple of Jazzmasters, although I have changed the pickups for Lollars in them, and in my 65 Reissue, also changed the bridge to a modern Fender bridge that is not sold as a part in North America but is widely available in the UK. You could say it’s a clone of the Mastery bridge. Earlier this year, Andrew down at Cosmo Music in Richmond Hill Ontario told me that there was going to be a 60th Anniversary Jaguar coming out. I gave him some money for a deposit, picked the blue version and promptly forgot about it.
I was reminded that I owned a small piece of the 60th Anniversary Jaguar and after scraping together nickels and dimes saved enough to pay for it. Apparently they are already sold out, so if I didn’t like it, I could return it and there would be no trouble selling the guitar. Of course I could sell it myself on Reverb in that gouging model that some folks use, but that’s really not who I am.
Why have I never had a Jaguar? Fair question, and the simple answer is that I could not think of a good reason to own one. This one is quite limited, which is nice I suppose, and has the painted headstock that I like the look of, the same as my Daphne Blue Jazzmaster. I was not familiar with the two single coil pickups. I knew of course about the neck only volume tone option that is in an old Jaguar, the same as a Jazzmaster and expected them to not sound the same. But I wondered if it would just sound like a Strat or Tele in an offset body shape and with a Jazzmaster like vibrato system. Yes it has a built in string mute system, but I had not figured out what I would use it for. Different scale length than a Strat or Jazzmaster, but I play lots of different guitars and don’t really get caught up in specific scale lengths except for the minute of acclimatization needed when switching from one scale length to another. Do I really notice a scale length difference? Between a Les Paul at 24.5” (not really 24.5) and a Strat at 25.5”. PRS guitars are 24.75” Honestly I don’t hear a difference and a guitar is either comfortable for me to play or it isn’t.
Out of the Case
The case is a G&G and is very nicely put together. The lining is an orange plush with 60th Anniversary embroidery inside the lid. The Fender logo on the outside is raised metal and it looks and fits very nicely. There’s a big storage pocket with an owner’s pouch holding the vibrato arm, the bridge cover, and the adjustment wrenches for the bridge and neck. Like most vintage styled Fenders, the truss rod adjustment is at the body. There is a tiny gap in the scratch plate to adjust the neck, but you have to be careful not to damage the scratch plate. I have a tool built for this specifically, but I find this location still to be a pain in the ass.
The paint is called Mystic Lake Placid Blue which has a beautiful depth of colour and small metallic elements, like a classic muscle car paint job. The overall finish is nitrocellulose lacquer which I personally prefer over poly. The opening image is a screen grab from Fender’s American website. The Canadian website is a horror show.
Yes that metallic paint really is that lovely
The action and neck were in excellent setup right out of the case. I was pleased as I have had other USA built Fenders whose out of the box setup was really bad. Cosmo would do a setup for me, and still would if I asked as part of the purchase. I don’t think that will be necessary.
A string change is going to be necessary as I really dislike whatever Fender shipped on the guitar. Those strings just feel nasty. According to Fender’s rarely functional website, they are USA 250R Nickel Plated steel. Feel like rusty wire to me.
Playing
The shorter scale length mentioned earlier is 24”. Sorry to say, I didn’t really notice. The tuning machines are pretty good, not as good as on a Suhr or an Anderson but good enough. They look vintage and as things appear to be, that’s most important to many buyers. There is a master tone and a master volume. The pickup controls are referred to as lead or rhythm, but really the upper controls are neck pickup only with tone and volume wheels, and the lower controls are on off sliding switches for neck and bridge plus a third switch called the “strangle” switch that cuts bass.
The bridge is vintage accurate using the same threaded rod saddles that I had replaced on my 65 Reissue Jazzmaster. A Mastery bridge may be in the works down the road as I play my guitars, not bury them in a closet. Fender claims that the pickups are a vintage wind. I don’t know what that means in the real world, but they are very quiet from a noise perspective and definitely bring the jangle and chime when asked. They are quite different from a Jazzmaster or a Stratocaster or a Telecaster. To my ear, they are vaguely Rickenbacker like in sound. That I am calling a good thing.
The fingerboard is rosewood, of the laminated design, with a single ply binding and inlaid with pearloid blocks. Frets are tall and narrow, and the fret ends are in excellent finish, not poking through the binding. Radius is 7.25” on a 60’s C neck profile. The mute works well although I still have not figured out where I will personally use it, and the long vibrato arm is really smooth. You can allegedly also lock out the vibrato completely with a sliding switch but as of right now, it doesn’t do anything.
I do not find the pickups overly hot or overly quiet. I run a Line 6 wireless set up to the board that I am using here. The board is a part of a wet dry rig in the That Pedal Show configuration, where the guitar and any drives go to the dry amp, and they plus all modulation, delay and reverb effects go to the wet amp. For my initial playing tests, the dry amp is a Paul Reed Smith Dallas 50 which is a very American style amp and the wet amp is a 100 watt Koch Multitone. Both amps have their own dedicated 2x12 cabinets.
The lowest switch on the right is the strangle switch. Not a fan as yet
Since I always play wet / dry that’s how I try out guitars; to fit my use cases. I had played another 60th Jaguar in the store some months back through a Morgan and it sounded fine. I like mine better wet dry. I really enjoyed the pickups in the rhythm position, with some tone dialled off through the PRS/Koch rig. Really warm without getting all flabby and woolly. Adding a bit of drive from a Nobels ODR-1 puts a nice edge on the sound without it leaping into distortion.
The nut is bone and there is no string binding when tuning. The tall frets are very easy to bend against and with proper guitar strings should be a real pleasure. At the same time, the fret height does not introduce that go out of tune annoyance that happens if you happen to squeeze with a death grip on the strings. I have had that happen on other guitars and it is truly a pain in the buttinski.
The Downsides
I am very impressed that I do not find much in the way of downsides. While the pickups are very quiet, I do hear a minor click when my hands come off the guitar or go back on, and I relate this to how the guitar is shielded. It’s a minor thing and could be corrected with a noise gate. I will check the insides when I have the scratch plate off next and fix up the shielding if I find it lacking.
The factory provided strings are horrible and that will get fixed really quickly with some nice NYXLs or XS electrics from D’Addario that are bright and play wonderfully. The factory strings are 0.10 to 0.46 and I will stay with the same gauge on the replacements. While I do not subscribe to the illusion that only heavy strings sound good, I do find that scale length can have impact on the feel of a set of strings, and I am happier going up in gauge as scale length drops to avoid strings ever feeling floppy.
I personally do not like the threaded rod saddles, and they will likely be replaced down the road by a Mastery bridge kit, or at least that type of saddle system. While I liked the bridge cover aesthetically, I found it could introduce pressure on the low strings resulting in some string buzz so I left it off. I am one of those weirdos who like the ashtray bridge covers on Telecasters and Stratocasters.
Value for Money
We won’t kid each other. There is a price premium for this limited model. However it’s not the idiot money added for anything waved past the Custom Shop and to my complete joy, no one has been near the thing to apply fake aging. The case is definitely a step up from standard, and I will say that out of the case, the guitar was set up better than most of the out of the case Fenders that I have tried, excluding anything from the Custom Shop, because I have not played any in recent times and it would be unfair to compare guitars built three years ago, to those coming out today.
A clearer view of the string mute system and the saddles in the bridge that will get changed out
Will the Jaguar hold its value? That depends on the economy and guitar buyers. It’s a much more pleasing guitar than I expected, I actually like playing it more than my Jazzmasters. Jaguars have never been a market leader and those who like them are a much smaller populace than say Strat or Tele aficionados.
For me, I buy guitars to play first, collect second and I am very impressed by the 60th Anniversary Jaguar. I find it superior to the made in Mexico variants (as it should be for the cost difference) and better than the general USA made Jaguars.
When the Jaguar was announced, I knew of a guitar coming from Gibson that had never been seen before. It was to be a vintage issue of a guitar that was never built. I made a choice to go with the Jaguar and put the money down. I have since seen and played a Theodore which costs nearly twice as much as the Jaguar. I won that round with the Jaguar by a huge edge.
In Summary
I did not need another guitar, and I had even forgotten that I had put a deposit down on this one. I am very glad that Andrew at Cosmo Music did not forget because the Jaguar is a real joy to play and moreover does not sound like any other guitar that I have. I’m looking forward to playing it more and making recordings with it. There’s a lot of opportunity in this guitar and that excites me.
Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.
