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.

The "Ice Picky" judgement I believe comes from a handful of things. For starters, the pots. Jaguars are 1Meg ohm all around except the rhythm tone control. The higher value the potentiometer, the less highs are attenuated off to ground, and the "sharper" and "clearer" the sound. Most rock and metal players, myself included, tend to turn the volume and tone controls all the way up on our guitars, particularly to "slam" the front end of the amplifier with as much output as possible to give a nice, distorted breakup if possible (and then we use the volume knob to "clean up" the sound for parts by rolling it back in the classic one channel "Marshall/Hiwatt/Fender" type setup where a cranked one-channel Tube Amp is in use). The problem is, if one is used to a Stratocaster or Telecaster with 250K pots, which cut off a nice bit of the highs, and depending on how your amplifier or overall sound is E.Q.'d, the Jaguar CAN be ice-picky, but I've found with most properly balanced high-gain setups, the Jaguar is no more Ice Picky than Eddie Van-Halen circa 1982 playing his frankenstrat.

The second piece of the "Ice Picky" problem is the controls. Most guitarists, and I don't mean to be insulting, are relative simpletons when it coems to controls. They like one volume knob, maybe a tone knob, and maybe a pickup selector, and in honest functionality, that's about all you need for a whole lot of sound variance. The Jaguar ramps this up by having 2 guitar circuits in it: a darker, rounder, neck-pickup only "Rhythm Circuit", and then a brighter, harsher, more fittingly biting sounding "Lead Circuit", these are switched by the slide switch on the upper bass side horn by 2 roller wheels which are the volume and tone for the Rhythm Circuit. On the lead circuit, on a classic Jaguar, you have 3 slide switches, two that are on/off for each pickup (neck and bridge from top down respectively), and then on the bottom is a high-pass filter that cuts the low and low-mids out and makes the Jaguar sound thinner, snorkely, and the effect of it varies depending on your rig. I think a lot of people turn that switch on and don't realize that that is why the Jaguar they are playing sounds so tinny and thin. Actually, most "regular" guitarists tend to get that switch mixed up wrongly with other features such as a "Phase Switch" (which the Mustang Has), a "Series Parallel Switch" (which would make the sound thicker if it were, not thinner), or a "low-pass filter" which is exactly the opposite type of audio filter the third switch on a FEnder Jaguar is.

Typically, for the default bridge flat-out rock setting, I have the rhythm rollers pegged at 10 (all the way upward toward the headstock), rhythm switch DOWN (lead circuit), neck pickup switch down (off), bridge pickup switch up (On), strange switch down (off), and volume and tone cranked. For convenience, I often only use the neck pickup in conjunction with the bridge pickup on the lead circuit for a crisp, chorused, clean Jangle, then switch to the Rhythm Circuit with a nice, warm, thick lead that sounds like if Sade was a guitar. Then the bridge is flat out, which has it's own, unique bridge position tone that is unlike any other Fender Guitar. Regardless of output, through recent experiments on a Classic Vibe 70's Jaguar, I discovered the output is less a part of the sound, and the pickup cONSTRUCTION is a big part of the difference. On a cranked, Marshall-based crunchtone, I get something akin to Van-HAlen circa 1982, with a little of that Paul Dean-esque stratty "spike" like the first two Loverboy records have, but with a midrange snarl NEITHER have, almost akin to Brian Setzer's Gretsch. It snarls, it screams, it has a nice bite, very fitting for the Jaguar name. See, the Jaguar uses tall single coil pickups, often wound hotter than Strat pickups, with a giant metal claw on the bottom, screwed right into the wood ala Eddie Van-Halens discovery in part of where good tone comes from. THe claws widen the magnetic field which makes the pickups sound warmer than they should for a pickup of roughly a stratocaster sized profile, and that actually takes some of the "edge" off, while providing some harmonic assistance as well,especially on something like my CV that I've not yet potted or secured the claws yet.

The "Delicate" arguement is because of the bridge. The Jaguar shares the same "synchronized floating tremolo" and "Rocker bridge" with the Jazzmaster. This bridge was designed to offer a "slight warble" (though it's capable of more than that) like a Bigsby, and be used with heavy gauge strings. You'd think just this bit alone would make me scared of using a Jaguar in a hard-rock/metal context....nope. See, the problem isn't the lighter strings, it's setup, and thinking OUTSIDE THE BOX with setup to get a Jaguar to work with a set of .009-.042 gauge slinkys. And it all has to do with how solid those saddles are locked to the bridge.

See, when the Jaguar came out, most people were playing with 10-13 gauge sets, and often flatwounds with a wound G string. In 2025, I play with a .009 or even .008 gauge set, with a plain G string, often dropped to dRop-D or drop CGDGBE tuning (especially on the Jaguar), and that really brings out where the bridge needs some "tweaks". Most people resort to aftermarket bridges like the Mastery, Staytrem, or even the old way which was a TUne-O-Matic. My method involves putting heavier springs on the low E and high E saddles to "Box in" the other middle 4 bridge saddles, then cantering the low E at an upward angle to lock the low-E string in place since that's the string that pops out the most on offsets with this bridge, so I can go "chugga chugga" on it like a maniac and it doesn't move. with this setup, even with a mild shim, or even no shim in some cases (my CIJ 98 Jaguar's neck is DECKED to the neck pocket and solid as a Floyd Rose), you get a pretty solid sustain, no buzz, no rattle, but it doesnt' lose the "sound" that a Jaguar is supposed to have. Plus, I find the flatter breakover angle works great for letting some resonance through.

For tone, a Fender Jaguar is a fierce beast through a modern high gain amplifier, even with low-wind pickups. The bridge position character - the most important character of the whole guitar pickup-wise, is a snarly, midrange-heavy, biting tone with a lot of those single-coil springy highs, and a little bit more of a Humbucker/P-90'esque low end to it that can be lifted up using the bass or midrange controls on the amplifier. Some amps might require backing down the treble to get rid of the sharpness, but some (like me) really like that sharpness because it makes thickly distorted riffs sound tight, even if the gain is full up, and backed down, the Jaguar gains more of a "Gibson-esque" character, though it loses a fair bit of gain depending on the individual amp and pickups. What really slays though is that the dynamic-differnce is further widened by the Jaguar's signature clean tone, the result is what you'd expect, a twangy, surf-like, crisp tone with a rubbery "tschak" type attack to it that plays well with Reverb. With both pickups on it's a nice change. This is extremely good for my 80's-influenced playing style which makes heavy use of high gain chugga chugga, lots of harmonics, whammy, and all else, but then contrasting with a very clean, chorused sound. It's like having Johnny Marr in Def Leppard.

Now, let's talk about PLAYING TECHNIQUE for a minute, probably the most important part. I tend to ride the meat of my palm on the bridge to palm mute, but there's a little more nuance to this on a Jaguar or JAzzmaster than there is on any of the other guitars on this page. There are times where I want the string behind the bridge to ring out, and other times where I'd rather the strings not ring out to tighten up the sound. This might not work for everybody (YMMV) but what I do, since I have a fairly large section of *meat* there to roll along the saddles, is I do a palm mute further behind the bridge to mute off the ringing of the strings behind the bridge, or I mute a little more forward to un-mute those strings and let the harmonics really ring out...all the while chugging along. If I want harmonics and open strings, I'll just play open without muting, and if I want no harmonics and open strings, I'll mute behind the bridge a little bit.

The stock 7.25" radius on teh Jaguar also plays well for hybrid picking, which when playing things where you're either chugging the lower strings and letting open ones ring out for effect (think "In my Dreams" by Dokken, that open "G" string note right after the "Stil the Same" lyric is KEY for the right "vibe" IMHO), because the curved radius makes palm muting individual strings or pairs/triples easier than a flatter radius. THis was a technique I pulled on my Jag-Stang initially and it's carried over to all the other offsets, though it's trickier to pull off on the modern 9.5" radius instruments.

While the vibrato is incapable (usually) of a full-limp dive, but it IS more than capable of early Van-Halen-esque techniques (think the first two albums before Ed started using a Floyd Rose), and has it's own little "bag o' tricks" with al that string behind the bridge, and the slower drop response allows for landing ON pitch on the way down or up really easy. Another new trick up the Jaguar's sleeve, via the way I set up/improve the metal parts in my stock vibratos, is that they are VERY capable of the "Cricket" sound. What is the "cricket" sound? Well, it's a high speed, gurgling wobble, generally only thought possible on a guitar with a well balanced floating Floyd Rose with good knife edges and good pivot posts. On my 98 CIJ, I sharpened the "pivot plate" to a razor sharp knife edge (or as close as I could get with files and sandpaper up to 2000 grit), and then created a "V" shaped index in the metal of the string mounting plate of the original CIJ Vibrato. I then used Pusheeen's tremolo bar trick with the hammer to bend the bar, and then tightened the collet. THis tightened up the whole mechanism almost mechanically perfect and allowed the entire pivot plate to flail and bounce like a floating Floyd Rose....which on the Jaguar is awesome to do because it's not an expected sound, and unlike a Floyd Rose, due to the straighter string pull (especially with my low-profile, light-string setup) the strings don't go flat on super-wide bends like a Floyd Rose does. So I can have my Gillis and double-stop-bend my Eastons too.

Overall, because of these attributes, that's why the classic, 2 circuit, single coil Jaguar is my favorite "off-the-rack" production guitar. To top it off, they are vastly under-appreciated, underrated, and far more capable than people have made them out to be the last 60-65 years.

Because of the above, the period of the late 1970's to early 1990's saw a lot of the punk-derived genres occasionally using Jaguars because they were cheaper than a Strat or a Tele at the time. You could get em' as cheap as $80, which is what Ric Ocasek got his Candy Apple Red 1964 for, and The Cars were already an internationally successful band at that time. They were still relegated to the singer/songwriter task though because they look flashy versus the Lead Guitarist who wanted something that could push a one channel Marshall into overdrive easily.

When the 1990's came, it was only then we started to explore the potential of the JAguar in heavier forms of music, but these forms were modifying it into things it was never originally. Kurt Cobain overnight had kids looking for cheap Jaguars to slap humbuckers into, most people took the vibrato bar out and replaced the bridge with a Tune-O-Matic. Despite the popularity, there was absolutely shit aftermarket support in the 90's, and absolutley null interest in supporting these genres because they weren't seen as "musically valueable" as say....shredders. So all us who grew up in the 80's and 90's seeing people playing these, got our own ideas, and by the mid 2000's, the Jaguar boomed and finally started becoming a legit model with many variants in the Fender catalog like the Strat and TEle, except the Jaguar has 7 variants to the Stratocasters 52 or so.

I picked up a CIJ with Cool Rails in 2005, and in 2025, a Squier Classic VIbe 70's bone stock. And honestly, they have very close similiarities despite one having 500K pots and Cool Rails. I think the most underestimated part of the Jaguar (and Jazzmaster) sound is that bridge setup. That's what makes the most striking difference. The "ADSR Envelope" (Attack, Decay Sustain, Release - to use a synth term) is largely determined by the bridge and tailpiece, and that's what gives the Jaguar a large chunk of it's characteristic sound.

One recent discovery is that the pickups make less of a difference. My CIJ and CV have similar tone, even though the Cool rails are 10.5K each, and the CV is around 6.4K each.....nuts huh.

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.