The Jag-Stang Kurt toured with was sent back and fourth between Fender and Nirvana a few times during the tour, during which, Ernie Bailey, Kurt's guitar tech, would replace the stock bridge with a Tune-O-Matic, and the bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan J.B. Humbucker in white - which were changed back to the stock Mustang bridge and DiMarzio H8/H3 humbucker when the guitar was sent back to Fender for revisions. When Kurt Cobain passed away, Courtney Love, his Widow, gave the guitar to R.E.M. who used it on "Let Me In" and also Peter Buck was seen using it in the music video for "What's the Frequency Kenneth" when their 1995 Album "Monster" came out.

In 1995, Fender released a production version of the Jag-Stang built at the Fujigen Gakki Plant. These differed from Kurt's guitar in that they had Basswood bodies instead of Alder, a special Japanese Fender Humbucker in the bridge (later marketed as the "Santa Ana" Humbucker), a Fender 62' REissue STrat pickup in the neck, and available in Sonic-Blue and Fiesta Red with white pearloid pickguards with white pickups with exposed pole pisces. These guitars followed the late 1997/early 1998 "Dyna" changeover, later getting Alder Bodies with the second run starting in 2003 (after discontinuation in 2001). In 2006, the guitar was discontinued again and reissued in 2021 on the 30th anniversary of Nevermind to cash-in on the Cobain hype.

When the Jag-Stang came out, guitar magazines and player reviews on Harmony Central were pretty universal that the bridge was "trash" and "would not stay in tune", and that the pickups were "Weak" and "Anemic". Later I would learn this was likely Fender just trying to make a balanced set of pickups for the guitar that would match well - vs. making a guitar identical to Cobain's specs which have a insane 16K JB in the bridge, and then a regular Mustang-level pickup in the neck. People hated the body shape because it did not look like the pictures in the Guitar World magazine in 1995 where it was first shown after Kurt's Death.

The reason for such pricing is in the 1990's, the adversairal condition between the kind of guys who used EMG pickups (Shredders, 80's guitarists, studio guitarists, metalheads) were HIGHLY at-odds with Grunge guitarists. Grunge was all about "killing the old guard", not being sexist (especially towards women), not being homophobic, and came from the kinds of guys who sat in the back of your classroom quietly writing lyrics in a Mead notebook about how much they hate everyone around them, and metal at the time was either a bunch of hair metal bands TRYING to be grunge, or bands like Pantera trying to invent a new kind of hyper-masculine metal with some groove to it that could wit with the Grunge image.

Then you had me - I was every bit the misfit this guitar was - I'm an 80's schooled lead player with a Grunge chassis. A bastard lovechild of Nirvana, STP, The CArs, and Loverboy - headed to the metal zone via classmates - 3 sides totally incompatible with each other - as was this guitar. And here was an 80's voiced guitar with a Grunge chassis. I came to the shop one morning, picked it up, and she was PERFECT. I mean, even the Mustang trem stayed in tune as I pushed the part people call the "Cigar Tube" in lieu of a Whammy bar and got it to do Eruption. She could sing, chug, djent, growl, grind, and bite like a beast. The previous owner put in some EMG pickups sometime around 1998, but wired them in with electric tape (DOH). THis was one of the first corrections I made during an early restring.

Finding out the trem stayed in tune from day 1 put me on a mission - well two - to find out how to make the Mustang Trem more stable for heavy whammy use, and to PROVE that this trem doesn't suck as much as the grunge guys say. Because here I was, once I got it home from layaway, and planned and prepped to make the Tremolo as stable as possible. And the goals were to do so, without "Mutilating" the guitar in any way, as it seems my mods to the Kramer Focus 3000 really bothered some people.

The original setup regimen started at this time. Which was putting pencil lead in the nut (and idea I got reading a Stew Mac Article on graphite as a lubricant in guitar applications), moving the trem springs to the upper notch, cranking the tailbar to 45 degrees for more bar travel and stability (I'll explain the science of this later), and using Fender Bullet Stainless Steel .009-.042/.040 gauge 350XL strings. I'd get about six months out of those with heavy playing, and it really added some treble "Zing" to the EMGs. For batteries, I used Energizer batteries. AT the time, she had the stock white slide switches, and the stock whammy bar.

The guitar's first show was the OHS 2000 Guitar Concert, switched to from my KRamer for a improvised guitar solo and then a cover of Metallica's "Seek & Destroy". The second show was the same weekend, with Lithium, playing Pratt Park - for about 3 hours. During that time, my classmates were bugging me to name the guitar after a girl at school I was smitten with, and instead I decided to take a note from Keith Richards and use a common name between Stefanie Power's spicy character in "Herbie Rides Again" - Nicole - which just happened to be my crush's middle name too - and then modified it to fit the Punk Rock/Grunge background of this guitar's history - Nikki. Thusly, the famous "Nikki" guitar was born.

Shortly into my tenure in Lithium, we started putting these Dykom stickers on the guitars we got during lunch at CiCi's Pizza - funny story, Nikki's sticker the "Butterfly gal" sticker or whatever it was called, became the mascot for my solo project later on, sort of like Candy Moore on the front of The Cars Candy-O album. The sticker just looked PERFECT on the guitar. One thing I kinda' had fun with as a metal player at the time, was having my own identity of being kinda' what we'd call now, "RetroWave" - lots of pastels. There were enough Hot Topic goths donning black, I'll be the vicious monster with a Turquoise Jag-Stang that's cute and unassuming LOOKING, but sounds like a fire breathing monster fit for Kirk Hammett's stable of ESPS.

And monster this guitar was for sure. Getting used to it's FLAT EQ caused by the EMGs meant the biggest modification, was to how I would EQ this guitar. For the first few years, I really struggled with my solo lead sound with iht because the 24" scale paired with the active EMG Pickups naturally scoops the mids, adds a TON of bass, and has a nice, spikey, sharp, treble like a Jaguar - with sort of a grid-like Overdrive that's totally unique. So in Lithium, you could hear I was moving the goalposts on my tone every other week to appease this guitar's "jamming an elephant down a sewer pipe" tone.

Nikki did FRY one amp which I was warned about when I bought it. See, in Lithium, there was a bit more of a tumultuous period where we had 3 lead guitarists. And at the time, I had no car and was at the mercy of my other bandmates to get to rehearsal - this meant not bringing my own amp a lot. So one rehearsal, while the other two focused on their parts, I played into a Gorilla GC-30 amp....and uh....let's just say Nikki smoked it! Seriously, there was a plume of smoke coming out of the amplifier as I welded the voice coil in the speaker and cooked the transformer because it just could not handle the 1.4vdc at 300ma this guitar throws out when I'm playing Metallica at 170bpm. This was not intentional, but it's a funny story no less, and kinda' an expendable amp anyway.

However, this was the least modified era for this guitar. I literally just restrung the Jag-Stang but never changed anything for the time. It did not matter because I was "Studio Only" at the time.

In late 2006, I went back to Hot Lix just before they shut down and bought a Vester Concert II guitar with the intent of using the Schaller style machine heads on Nikki. During this period you'd notice I had BLACK machine heads on the Jag-Stang, and I had to ream the holes for them as well, so no longer could I use the original press-fit bushing type Klusons. My DREAM Machine heads were sealed gear, H-mount, bolt-collar, split shaft machine heads - like I'd later find. BUt nobody was making such a thing in 2006.

After the Jaguar's upgrades were done, Nikki got her first major Wiring upgrade in late 2006 with a new pair of Switchcraft BLACK slide switches, and the now familiar pickup selector on the bridge position switch was done. I tried to integrate a Strangle Switch and a faux rhythm circuit switch the same way I did my Kramer, but I did not have the right capacitors, and the ones I used did not work. I was really wondering what to use for the neck position switch. This changed everything and lead to me using the current wiring diagram. ARound the same time, I also wrote the article on jag-stang.com about how I setup my whammy.

Because I no longer had a trumpet, the trem lubricant changed from Tuning Slide grease, to Vaseline, because it was more readily available, and it worked pretty darned well.

In 2007, Fender stopped selling the stainless Bullet 350XLs I'd been using, including my favorite set with the .040 gauge low E, so I had to settle for the 250XL Bullets in .009-.042 at that point because that's all I could get.

I also started experimenting with vibrato bar attachment techniques. The original grub screw fell out and got lost, so I was using a pot-metal wood-screw for awhile. One thing I must note is I started setting it up without the bar sticking out of the bottom of the "cigar tube", allowing for some prett obnoxious upward bar-pulls.

Another upgrade was I finally had a use for that switch. EMG had released a new circuit called the "Pi2 Phase Inverter Preamp) - but I was not going to use it in the traditional method. The way it was intended to be installed, was with the toggle switch sticking out of the guitar. I turned the Toggle ON - and then tucked it TIGHTLY into the switch cavity - and use the Neck Position switch to route through the PI2, bypass it entirely, or turn off the neck pickup, allowing me to use the bridge pickup switch like a "Kill Switch".

ARound the same time, I was at Smokin' 66 rehearsal and my tone control became disconnected, and I liked the sound. The same week, I'd seen a YouTube video on making your own No-Load Tone pots - so I took the 25K Tone knob, and cut the trace on the resistive track right before the "Full up" position, removing the tone control when I'm all the way up - which is most of the time.

I also added a treble bypass capacitor that was a tad too strong, and it lead to a sound similiar to a Telecaster when rolled down - so KILLER application.

This is the "tone stack" I currently use. The switch/position layouts are as follows....

I had a 66 Fender Mustang awhile back that could do this on the "E" and "A" strings, and researching the trans-trem and Washburn Wonderbar - and how they react with different strings, may mean a move back to Fender Bullets eventually. It seems the Dynamic Vibrato already has SOME of this capability.

THe idea is this - I might be designing a tailpiece that allows the fall rate to be adjustable for each string. I won't say anything more until I've done it, but It's a cool idea, and it might put the Dynamic Whammy on the map. Plus, nobody's making a botique version. I also have an idea for a JAGUAR version as well using the same principles. There's a lot of real-estate to work with. Might even be able to figure out a method to lock the tuning using the bar, AND have the lock adjustable by the user so you're not constrained to specific intervals like a Trans-Trem is. Plus it would require no modification to the guitar at all, just replace the Cigar tube with this piece and that's pretty much it.