The name was derived from some early photoshoot where someone at Fender bought a Jaguar E-type convertible car and took photos of the yet unnamed guitar leaning against the car in various positions. And so started Fender naming guitars after cars. It fit, the Jaguar was an expensive, sleek, high end guitar, just like a Jaguar is a sleek, expensive, high end car.

The Jaguar caught on right in the midst of the Surf craze and for that brief moment between 1962 and the British Invasion circa 1964. Lots of guys were playing these in surf groups, such as Carl Wilson from the Beach Boys, Bob Berryman of the Surfaris, the entirety of the Surfin-Bird single-e-chord jamming Trashment all used identical Burst Jaguars. In a dose of irony, the Jaguar even found some Jazz usage with Joe Pass around that time while he was cooped up in a mental ward.

But by the end of the sixties you almost NEVER saw a Jaguar on stage. Jimi Hendrix had one on stage - once - but he pantomimed with it on one of those TV shows (a photo of which inspiured the Squier Super Sonic almost 30 years later). While the Jazzmaster was still getting around sneakily in teh scene, getting stolen from a Who Concert, goin down to the Crossroads, or hangin' with Hendrix during a performance of a R&B group singing "shotgun", the Jaguar was oddly absent. It followed the stylistic changes of the Jazzmaster, with binding added to the neck in 1964, and Blocks in 1965 post-CBS buyout. However, it lost it's "top of the line" status to Hendrix's use of the Stratocaster in the late 60's.

In the 70's, you still did not see Jaguars much, actually even less. Gibson was the word of the day, andd the Jaguar and by extention, Jazzmaster, were mostly cast into the dustbins of the past as "surf relics". You could get a Jaguar as cheap as $50 back then, they were that unwanted. But they still had a few people. It seems when Elvis Costello might have boosted the Jazzmaster a little bit around 1979-1980, some people started using them more. Elliot Easton found a candy apple red one in a hock shop in 1980 for Ric Ocasek, which he took on the 1980 Panorama tour with him, and was later used in the 90's on Weezer's "blue" album, particularly on "Say it Ain't So". A few others were spotted with Jaguars at the time, like a TV performance of Barracuda saw Nancy Wilson playing a pink one, and one of the GoGos had a burst model around 1984 or 1985. But there was oone important one...

Martin Jenner was a session musician for the Everly Brothers and some other country and Americana rock acts in the 1960's-1980's. One of his gigs was with Cliff Richard of The Shadows on a kind of half-Christian Rock half-Pop-Rock thing he was doing solo at the time touring the world. And What did Martin Jenner get but a Left-Handed 1965 or 1966 Fender Jaguar, and modify it to the hilt. Looking at other guitars Jenner had, such as an SG, and a Telecaster he used prior, he was alreay modifying his guitars. Likely he saw he had a good "world travel" guitar he could soup up to cover the range of territory Cliff wanted him to cover - if he hotted it up. So he added an extra tone knob or volume knob, a 3-way switch to make pickup switching more convenient, and re-drilled the right handed vibrato unit for left-hand use, and then put in a pair of DiMarzio Humbuckers - a popular choice at the time was the PAF in the neck, and Super Distortion in the bridge - does this guitar sound familiar to anyone (sans the block's and binding neck)?

In the 80's,on the industry side, Fender was failing at first, while Dan Smith rebuilt the company, focus was on the most popular models to help save the company. Howwever, in 1985, the Jaguar was introduced in the Japanese made collectors series, built at the Fujigen Gakki plant in Japan until late 1997, when the Crafted in Japan A serial models (like mine) were built at the Dyna Gakki plant. But other than that, you did not see Jags much in the 80's.

So skip ahead about 10 years of a decade nearly Jaguar-less, and a young musician named Kurt Cobain was about to embark on a world tour with his band Nirvana. He finds a Fender Jaguar in the LA Recycler for around $350 with a anvil case from a guy living where Jenner was said to be living at the time. Months later, the third music video for Nevermind - Lithium - comes out, and what's on screen but a sunburst, left handed, left-hand-drilled vibrato equipped, dual DiMarzio Fender Jaguar with a Tune-O-Matic bridge, 3 knobs, 3-way switch, and a oddly newer looking bound left-handed neck with a Pre-CBS Strat style headstock on it with a strange late-80's/early 90's reproduction logo. Whodathunk that guitar playing "Every Man" and "Devil Woman" in 1980 in Chinchester England with a session man would become a part of a iconic punk-inspired piece of music history 10 years later. Crazy huh. But either way, the impact this guitar had cannot be understated. Scads of younger Gen X and older Gen Y like myself saw this guitar, and we WANTED ONE. But of course, Fender, at the time, was more interested in placating to better heeled Bluesmen and Shredders. But Kurt was not alone in Jag-wielding musicians that much is for sure. Kim Thayil of Soundgarden had one, Sonic Youth was already using them, Kevin Shields and Belinda Buther of My Bloody Valentine were using them, Eric Erlandson of Hole not just had one of his own but used Kurt's Jaguar in the "Doll Parts" video. Still not as common as aMustang or a Jazzmaster, but they were there. As the decade went on, the lead guitarist of Smash Mouth played a custom shop model for awhile, as did one of the guys in the Counting Crows. The Jaguar was finding itself all over the place. Even Ric Ocasek's red The Cars Panorama tour Jaguar was on Weezer's blue album in 1994, and Ric himself used that same guitar on national TV at one of The Cars last shows before he died. It was said Kurt had a second Jaguar somewhere, but this one has not been seen live at all.

The 2000's, when X and Y were getting enough money to actually buy something expensive, was when we saw the Jaguar grow into maturity and get a bit more popular. In 2008, the flood of new Jaguars started. First we had the Jaguar Special HH with a stoptail and Tune-O-Matic and a pair of 7K ohm Dragster Humbuckers (I owned one for awhile), which was a Japanese model originally introduced in 1998 in Japan only. After that came the Mexican Made models, one in HH with alternative wiring, and another one like a stock Jaguar, these also had the tailpiece moved forward for better breakover over hte bridge. Not long after that came a new HH Squier model to sit next to the dual Jazzmaster pickup jazzmaster model. A Fender Korean made Modern Player Jaguar with Dual P-90s was also released around this time. Then we started to see the first signature Jaaguar in 2008 with the Johnny Marr (The Smiths, Modest Mouse) Jaguar, and then in 2011 the Kurt Cobain Signature Jaguar was released, based on his modified 1965 guitar that started all this. Not long after that came the Squier Classic Vibe series Jags, and several other variants over the years.

Because of this, it only appealed to people looking for a "cheaper" Fender option (punks, new wavers, post-punks, pop musicians), and people who might have been reliving Surf before the early 90's Surf Revival.

Then it became known as a "grunge" guitar in the early 1990's because Nirvana was truly the first of the grunge bands to hit it big, and Kurt got basically the first "Super Jag" from the L.A. Recycler, generally hearlded as originally being a lefty session guy with a need for skinny profile necks: Martin Jenner. And overnight, the Jaguar went from that piece of junk your grandpa kept telling you was better than your Bengal painted Charvel, to THE guitar to have.

But these stereotypes carried on with it, and a lot of vintage cork sniffers got mad at the kids tearing up vintage Jags to turn them into Cobain-casters. So of course, they got beaten down for yet another decade despite popularity.

The truth on the Jaguar in a hard rock/metal context, is that it sits somewhere between. A Vintage Jaguar CAN be fully capable, or incapable, depending on when it was made. And I don't mean modified - I mean STOCK! A stock early sixties Jaguar through a high gain amp, assuming higher ouput pickups, will give a very chunky, fat, tone, with a lot of bite (true to the name), and they do gain up well. Everybody makes these dumb psuedoscience assumptions about the length of the wiring, to the pickups, to th evibrato, affecting the sound negatively.

The pickups are the #1 concern. I have played early sixties Jaguars before, I know what they sound like, and "Ice Picky" is only on the lead circuit with the Strangle on because it's supposed to sound Ice Picky, that's the whole point of the Strangle switch (though there's more to that later). Of course, considering how confused traditional gutiarists are by the circuits, I'm not that surprised.

A stock set of early sixties Jaguar pickups can be as low as 6.5K ohms, or as high as almost 8K Ohms - that last one is friggin Humbucker territory, and hotter than some Gibson T-Top humbuckers from the 70's. It seems to me, in 1963, Fender was winding the Jaguar especially hot - with at least two examples I've seen back when Phil-X was demoing guitars in california being particularly fat and chunky sounding. I also played my first Jaguar, a 1963 Sunburst which was especially fat sounding, fat enough I made the metalhead do a doubletake when he realized the guy playing Metallica was not playing a Flying V, but rather, a Jaguar. I think the shop guy told me that Jag had 7.5K ohms in the bridge - that's pretty hot for what is basically a Strat sized single coil.

The modern pickups can get even higher. When Squier first released the VM Jaguars in the early 2010's, the bridge pickups on those were 11K Ohms. I knew something was up when I played one and it sounded just like my Jaguar with cool rails in it....just a hair more noise....not much, but a little (the Cool Rails in my Jaguar are both bridge position and around 10-11K ohms just like the VM Jaguar). Ditto with the Fender Classic Player Jaguar Special - which ALSO came with hot pickups. The irony is I sold my Jaguar HH Special because the full size 7.5K Dragster Humbuckers were being eaten alive by my 10.8K Cool Rails equipped CIJ. Then you have stuff like the Cobain Jaguar which has the hottest pickups you can get in one of these, a DiMarzio Super Distortion around 12-15K in the bridge, and a 8.4K PAF in the neck. Serioulsy, a Cobain Jaguar is 100% shred-ready. It is, in fact, a copy of the original "Super Jag".

Outside of the pickups is the pots. The Pots on a stock Jaguar are 1meg each on the lead circuit. 1MEG pots are the REAL reason electronically these guitars sound the way they do. That said, 500K is not far off either (and that's what I have). It does not change the tonal characteristics that much for the guitar to sound like a Gibson, it sounds like a darker sounding Jaguar - that's it.

Because the #1 part of the sound - is that BRIDGE and the Scale Length combined. 24" Scale + low breakover makes for a plinkier tone overall - BUT - Sustain is not a problem, and it's not all jsut breakover angles. It's a combination of geometry that's a little more complex.

The way I setup mine, I have .009's, no neck shim, the guitar feels very "Flat" (thought he sound is very alive and vibrant), and has stupid low action even with a 7.25" fretborad radius, which is kind of crazy. The Low "E" string problem is fixed by jamming it against a slightly angled low E saddle....I find upstrokes don't bother the string as much, and down strokes used to, then I leaned the Low E at a slight angle, and now the string ain't goin nowhere. The saddles are boxed in with heavier springs on the low and High E string, so everything feels like a Tune-O-Matic in tightness, but sounds like a Jaguar - the ultimate goal.

The rocker bridge is left rocking - that's KEY! Seriously, the Jaguar is the lightest guitar on strings I've ever seen. I almost get a whole year out of a set of Paradigm .009s on mine and it is played all the freakin' time. One alteration I DID make to the vibrato, was to permanantly set the Trem-Lock button in the unlocked position. Since I never break strings, I can set the trem to do a 1/2 step upward pull, and all the way down to "B" witha bar dive, which is more than adequate. And when in Drop D or Drop C the string gets VERY limp, almost like a Floyd, when I do a bar dive - and this is with the stock import CIJ Trem, not one of those new Panorama trems or a Mastery. I don't use any of that hyper-expensive crap!

The sustain thing is a myth - I get plenty of Sustain, and with the mods I made to the pickups, mainly jamming the covers with foam, and crimping the claws a hair to dampen them using the "surround" plastic, I don't get any microphonics, and I can extrude notes off feedback at stage volume all day long like Brian May's Red special. Sustain is about the average for anything else, even with the stock bridge and tailpiece. The thing about "Sustain" that most people forget is that the electric unamplified, or amped up and clean, is not a good measurement - you have to have it plugged into an amp, and you need to have gain applied. A compressed, high gained up Jaguar can sustain more than long enough to satisfy anyone who doesn't need a Sustainiac to get that sound....at 120bpm, the Jaguar's sustain is about an entire guitar solo's worth of tied whole notes - 16 freakin' bars - and that's a LONG solo, not a short one, so "no sustain" my left nut. If I'm keeping up with Les Pauls, you can too.

The electronics may need some getting used to. What IS cool is the Jaguar has a more direct route to the whole Van-Halen "blip-blip-blip-blip" ala the end of the guitar solo to "You Really got Me" - you just go to the lead circuit and turn the bridge pickup switch on and off. Blowing up a Switch on a Jaguar is no big deal - the control plates make replacement a 5 minute process instead of a 1 hour process ala a Jazzmaster. For a direct route to the neck pickup (and a very smnooth solo tone at athat), I use the Rhytnm circuit on the Jaguar for lead work funny enough. One of my favorite crunchy lead tones with oodles of warmth and sustain is the neck pickup on the Rhythm Circuit.

The Strangle Switch is also very useful. For one, it can be used in lieu of a Treble Bypass capacitor, so if I'm rolling my volume back for gain reduction on a single channel Marshall, or something like that, I'll hit the Strangle if the amp's not keeping enough highs while cleaning up. that said, it's also useful for funk stabs, and other stuff where you need to clear some bass frequencies to do textrual, Andy Summers-esque type things.

The lead circuit control scheme also lends well to rolling off the highs tastefully enough that it does not feel like it's the same as the rhythm circuit. It's a little less, and the Jaguar still keeps some "edge" when backing it off. I'ts because Fender altered the lead circuit wiring on the Jag to output from the tone pot instead of the volume pot, so it does some mild volume reduction as well, but retains some highs by adding more resistance between the tone cap and the output jack.

Adding tri-mode switching to a Jaguar with single-sized humbuckers - like mine - creates a really really interesting set of timbres that sound like a Jaguar merged with a Strat when the split is run parallel with the other output - it's fatter, warmer, has the stereotype Jaguar midrange snarl and spike, but gets some of the strat's nasal "position 2/4" qualities added to it, so it still sounds like a Jaguar but with some of the Bell-like qualities of a Strat. VERY neat, especially for clean tones.

The first thing everyone whines about with the Jaguar is the switches, which I admit, are very inconvenient in a traditional sense. The best thing to do regarding the Jag in a hard rock context, is to throw away everything you know about guitar switching and control because the Jaguar REALLY has some true shortcuts built into it's circuit. It's one of those things where traditional guitarists get too hung up on "how things have been, are, and always will be" - that stodgy, traditional, and often, I might admit, quite judgy stance I've been fighting since I started playing a Jag in 2005.

Typically how I start with a Jaguar is this - rhythm circuit plate, switch down, rollers all the way up, diamond shaped plate down, up, down (bridge pickup only, strangle off), lead circuit volume and tone full up - so you're in the classic rock traditional setting of bridge pickup on the lead circuit, wide open. When I change to both pickups, I just need to hit a switch, and if I want the neck pickup, I just switch to the rhythm circuit flat out for a very very smooth, round, lead tone (yeah, I know it's called the "Rhythm" circuit but what "law" tells me I NEED to only use that circuit for chords). If I need more clarity or to cut some gain, I'll use the strangle switch in conjunction with the lead volume like a Treble Bypass in the old way they did it in the 70's on back to clean up, rolling off thee volume.

The Jaguar tone by most is characterized as being "Ice Picky" and "trebly", and to some "weak" or "tinny". I hbave never found that to be the case, actually, it's the most midrange heavy Fender of the lot, it snarls somewhere between a Humbucker Gibson and a FilterTron Gretsch with the fruityness of a Gibson in the middle position. It's very much a "Les Paul by Fender" in a way, but with a Gretsch-like snarl to it that a Gibson does not have. It also has a tighter low-end and that spanky signature Fender top. THAT is the REAL Jaguar tone. IT DOES NOT SOUND LIKE A STRAT. I have a theory that a lot of the Ice Pick and Tinny comments come from traditional guitar players who picked up a Jag and tried to play one witout knowing what the controls do, so next thing you know they're trying to play smoke on the water with a thin, snorkely tone through a surf amp and saying "this sounds like shit". The Scale length has a lot to do with this character too since the attack is less as sharp, and shorter scales tend to scoop the low mids and high mids more - which is coincidentally, my favorite EQ curve for guitars BTW as the floor shakes, the eardrums are at their limit, and the midrange hits like a Mack truck.

In a hard rock context, you want a high gain amplifier. At the lowest gain I'd go with a Hylyte Era Hiwatt Custom 100 with the Henry Joyce mod, or a JCM800 with the Jose Ardonio modification, and for those I suggest one of the hotter new variants from Squier or Fender like the Classic Player, Classic Vibe, Vintage Modified, or anything else with the golden 11K bridge pickup in it (yes, Jaguar pickups get that high - remember, we're NOT talking about Humbucker Jags here - not yet). These guitars chunk and sound just like my Cool-Railed CIJ. Marshall power really brings out a Andy Summers meets Phil Collen/Stanely Clarke vibe - Police meets Def Leppard - snarly midrange, aggressive, abrasive power chords, and a smooth lead with some texture to it - and because it's a Jaguar designed to be played clean, it cleans up REALLY good. The range is very wide in tone, ranging from early Thrash metal, to The Monkees. When I cover Master of Puppets these days, I use the Jaguar most of the time.

The Whammy system is another part where the traditional hard rock or metal player is going to need to drop all of their preconcievd notions and look beyond the expected. It's not a Floyd Rose, it does not act like a Floyd Rose, so don't expect it to act like a Floyd Rose. But it's not the ultra finicky light dipper everybody makes it out to be, it's actually - and I'm talking the old, knife edge version, not the new Panorama version - got quite a range to it, about a low "B" note on the low E all the way down, and about 1-step up on the High E. It works great for those Eddie Van-Halen slides into notes, or whipping up a string and pulling off before diving it. And it has some of it's own peculiar tricks. For one, you can do Pedal Steel effects by pressing down behind the bridge with a free finger while picking notes. Another one is picking notes behind the bridge and getting strange harmonic overtones that way all over the place.

The bridge itself can be really adopted if you utilize a unique playing technique and learn to master 2 things - muting individual strings while letting others ring out using your palm, and palm muting the strings behind the bridge, and palm muting BOTH the bridge and behind it when you are wanting a tight, metal "chugga chugga" thing. This is a tremendous part of how I play Jaguars and JAzzmasters and how I get the most out of them.

But a lot of this relies on another thing, a good setup. Unfortunatley, the Jaguar and Jazzmaster by extention, suffer from "Ahead of it's time" engineering. Basically, the tool tolerances and micro-sized mechanics of the whole device were requiring something tighter than what Leo Fender could provide in 1957. The common fix for this is heavy strings, but that's not how I do, and not how you get a lot of what I do above. I play with standard .009-.042 gauge, the same strings most offset players cringe when I tell them what I use. And the amount of Buzz i get is minimal at worst, as in does not hit the amp, I have VERY good sustain, and the tone is thick, fat, and has a nice "cut" to it.

How I get a Jaguar working with .009s is by doing a number of things to "solidify" the bridge. Basically, jam up the threads for the gross action adjustment, jam up the threads for the saddle height, and then put stiffer springs on the E strings to box in the middle 4. Then I iangle my low E saddle upward and use the adjustment screw hole to "Jam" the string in place. With all this stuff set optimally, and the strings properly stretched out, I think I only have to tune the Jaguar a few times between restrings.

For strings, if you are going this obnoxious, high energy route of playing, you want something that will hold up to the abuse. Originally I used Fender Bullet .009-.040 or .009-.042 gauge sets, in Stainless when you could still get them like that. When Fender dropped the bullet Ends sometime in the 2010s, because they won't unravel, Earnie Ball came out with the Paradiggm strings and had a huge hype-train getting guys like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Kirk hammet to try and break them and knock them out o ftune, and I can say, they hold up stupid well on a Jaguar. Another experiment I plan to do when I can, is take the .007 Billy F Gibbons Challenge with Rev Willie G's Mexican Lottery brand strings - in .007.038 IIRC. Nobody I know has run a string that light on a Jaguar before, and I'm interested to see what that will go like. I might adopt those if It gives more whammy bar travel. But best overall from about 2017 onward has been the Paradigms, I've had sets last me as long as a year and a half before they went dead or broke, so I can confirm it's not snake oil. I'm not nice to my strings, I paddle them around with a Dunlop Jazz III at speeds up to 212bpm, and a lot of the time, when I'm playing slower, I'm picking pretty hard.

Now let's discuss the big Sunburst elephants in the room.....

The Fender Stratocaster got it's first variants circa 1981-1983 with "The Strat" and "Elite Strat". The Jaguar had to wait almost twice as long to start getting any variants outside of the norm. Sure, they were reissued in 1985 made at Fuji Gen Gakki in Japan, but those were still traditional 2 single coil JAguars with the vintage vibrato and traditional wiring. Ditto the AVRI Series, or anything with "American Vintage" in the name.

Fender Jaguar HH (Japan) - The first true Jaguar variant official from Fender as a factory made product was the "Jaguar HH". This model is a regular Jaguar, sans vibrato, with a stop tailpiece and Adjust-O-Matic bridge in it's place, and 2 Humbuckers. The earliest models came in some pretty cool colors such as candy apple redburst and teal greenburst metallic, but later on got the usual suspects (Vintage White, Black, Aztec Gold, Inca Silver, and so on). These were made at Dyna Gakki starting around 1997 or 1998, and continue to be put into production off/on here and there. The longest US Run of these was from about 2006-2010 as the "Fender Jaguar HH Deluxe", which was a black on black guitar with chrome hardware, and 2 Dragster Humbuckers - I owned one at one point. I found the Dragster Humbuckers to be a bit lacking in the "power" department.

Squier VM Jaguar (original version) - The first Squier Jaguar model was released in 2008 and was sort of a low-cost ancestor to the Fender Blacktop Jaguar. It eliminated much of the chrome plates as a cost cutting measure and had a strange adjustable bridge setup on it unlike anything before or since.

Fender CP Jaguar Special HH - The Classic Player series was launched in 2009 as a series of Mexican made Jaguars both in the Traditional wiring with 2 hot wound single coils, or this variant that featured 2 Humbuckers, and the Rhythm circuit repurposed as a kill switch and a pair of "roller" coil taps, a feature nobody other than Peavey before had used on their guitars (the Peavey T60's Tone controls did this). The only other differences were an Adjust-o-Matic bridge, and a US Tailpiece located closer to it.

Fender Blacktop Jaguar - This was a Mexico made HH model with simplified wiring and a Tune-O-Matic and Stop Tailpiece setup. These started being made in 2009 or 2010 as well. It seems like a upscale version of the original VM Jaguar.

Fender Modern Player Jaguar - Chinese made dual P-90 Jaguar with a Adjust-o-matic, Stop Tailpiece, and no pickguard. These came in mocha, sienna sunburst, and a few other colors. Mostly Mocha seems to be the most common color. It's basically a Les Paul Special in a Jaguar body.

Fender Kurt Cobain Jaguar - This is a mexican made guitar released on the 20th Anniversary of Nevermind in 2011 to pay tribute to Kurt Cobain who brought the guitar back out of obscurity. This guitar was based on Kurt's heavily modified 1965 he likely bought from Martin Jenner in the L.A. Recycler. 2 DiMarzio pickups, Adjust-o-Matic bridge, 3-way switch, 3 knobs on the lead circuit instead of two - the whole nine yards. And of course it was availible as a Lefty and a Righty, and in Road Worn relic and brand new condition.

These models change the game substantially because they eliminate some of the more esoteric traits of the JAguar in favor of more traditional parts (Humbuckers, Tune-O-Matic bridges, simple classic 1v/1t/3-way wiring). But with that it takes away the unique character somewhat, with the exceptions being the CP HH Special and the Cobain model which have their own strange sonic pathways to explore.