In the 70's, it was relevant because almost all amps used for rock/metal were driven by tubes, and had only ONE channel, were designed to be CLEAN sounding, as clean as possible while turned up real loud, but due to limitations in circuit design, if you went past a certain point (especially on Marshall designs, whic hare based on the Fender Bassman of all things), they would start to "clip" (the signal goes out of band and over-drives the amp - hence the name "tube overdrive" - causing that lovely breakup signature "Marshall Crunch" we all like so much in my style of playing). Thing is, as the 70's went along, there was a unspoken "war of distortion" of sorts, ranging from slapping a Ibanez TubeScreamer pedal at the front end of a Marshall Plexi or JCM800 for that extra "push" over the edge into a variation of the hard rock/metal distortion sound we all love, to something like a Mesa Boogie amp (gain city), or a Soldano by the time the 80's ended. A LOT of transistor practice amps were GREAT sounding for this sort of thing.

And by the end of the 80's, the unspoken "gain wars" continued, as Nu-MEtal came along and people got tired of the lack of definition and high end of a Fuzz more traditionally used with these types of guitar, and popularized with Alternative Rock in the early 1990's. At first, having a 17K Ohm Invader slamming the front end of a Boogie TriRec or Engl Powerball was plenty, but because of us nutty Millennial and Xennial kids into guitar at the time, the amp makers, and amp modeler and digital effects makers, started pushing gain to an INSANE degree. Ever seen an old Line6 product with the "Insane" channel, yeah, that's for us kids trying to distort the hell out of a $159 3 single coil Squier strat. This paired with the fact most of your favorite artists don't really use as much distortion as you think they do, is why I'm writing this page - THIS is how you get killer tone out of a single coil pickup. A stock Telecaster (especially the old blackguards from the early 50's - they have bridge pickups as hot as a P.A.F. humbucker out of a 59' Burst by winding) can be a pretty vicious shred-machine in capable hands. Another overly-famously distorted pedal is the DOD Death Metal - I had a bandmate who ran a stock 3 single American Strat through one......that Strat was carrying the low-end of the band between the Bass and the other guitarists, and was so distorted it sounded like a hot-tub motor.

With the insane degree of gain available to us guitarists post 2000, there's no reason to think that a standard issue single-coil guitar can't "chugga chugga" and "weedly weedly weeee" with everything else pointy and Floyded up. Heck, one of the meanest, most gained-up tones didn't come from the 90's - it came from a Canadian guitarist from the 1970's and 1980's - Paul Dean of Loverboy - seriously, Dean had a METAL Tone, and this was from a 3 single coil Strat hammering a HIWATT Custom 100 or 50 Watt Marshall with ganged channels like it owed that Strat lunch money....on the first three records. Turn Me Loose? That's not Humbuckers, that's a Hendrix-level Stratocaster.

So there's little reason a Mustang, JAguar, or Jazzmaster can't sound like that. Actually, cool Dean Reference, his first guitar was a Jazzmaster. And two of the three have some real nasty power. That brings up another one - Kurt Cobain, he used a Mustang, a STOCK 69' Comeptition Mustang, on Nevermind. As much as he said they sound like shit, that little 5.91 Alnico single coil sound of the Mustang is far meaner than it gets credit. Sure, he put a hotrail in that thing later on, but even stock the Compstang was pretty nasty through a DS-1 and cranked boogie preamp.

The first part - the gain is a lie - I'm going to be honest, running any Jaguar, whether it's my 98' with the 10K Cool Rails in it, or my new 2024 Squier VM 70's which is bone stock and has half the ohms, I'm not running the gain higher than maybe 7. If you go listen to Paul Dean's soloed tracks for "Working for the Weekend" on YouTube, you'll notice during the verses, he has a very light crunch going on his Strat. You don't need to dime the hell out of the amplifier (unless you're using a traditional setup) to get a good crunch on a single-coil offset. While Loverboy is not metal, in the mix of the band, it sounds VERY metal when Mike REno is singing, and Dean is just playing chords, but he's running less than my Jaguar crunch-wise on the verses than I do.

A BIG part of this is playing style, and on the Jaguar and Jazzmaster, you don't want too much gain anyway, because one SPECIAL feature of those guitars with the stock vibrato setup, is how the "third bridge" (extra string behidn the bridge) reacts to your playing like an on-board harmonic reverb chamber. That bit of string is what makes those models sound unique. It gives them an aetherial presense unmatched, there's always this floaty trail of ghost notes following you, and it's easily muted out by learning to palm mute behind, and palm mute the entire bridge with your hand to control it, so if you want a tighter tone, you can mute off the thrid bridge and get that classic chunka chunka without extra ghost notes, harmonics, resonance, or ringing behidn the bridge. Another cool thing, and the vintage-radius 7.25" fretboard guitars are GREAT for this - is palm muting only certain strings off and letting others ring out, which is a technique I use a ton. It's not unusual for me to be palm muting the lower strings and then letting the higher ones ring out, or musting groups of strings and letting another couple, maybe a chord, ring out. I built a huge chunk of my current style around finding "exploits" in the bridge design on Offsets.

The bridge systems have an effect on the tone. On the Jaguar and Jazzmaster it actualy mutes out the percentage the pickups make a change to a large degree. I own two Jaguars, one with Cool Rails, one with stock Jaguar pickups in it, the tone is crazy closer between the two than I can almost believe. The stock pickups are just a little more twangy than my "cool rails", but not by much. The cool rails are "warmer" and have a little less as bright highs, but BOTH have a signature snarl that the Fender Jaguar should be known for, it's a very "Def Lepppard-esque" guitar tone....think the first three or four records, sort of liek a "Fender-ized Gibson" in a way. The Pots make even a negligable difference, funny enough, having 1MEGs in my Squier Jag just brings the 6K Ohm JAguar pickup inline with the 10K Cool Rails gain-wise. Actually, that's one thing I don't think anyone has ever mentioned, is how those 1MEG Pots affect the amount of distortion put out by a single coil vs 500K or 250K. It seems the capacitance in the circuit introduced by lower value pots doesn't just cut off some highs, it also cuts off some of the clipping too because a lot of that "abrasiveness" lives in the high-mid-high range area. Leaving that in is why a Jazzmaster all gained up through a JCM800 sounds like a "pissed off Telecaster on steroids".

Both guitars have their magnetic field spread out from the pole pieces. The Jazzmaster does this using a wide, flat coil, on the Jaguar it's the claws on the pickups that spread this field out by them going magnetic and spreading the magnetic field out under the strings wider than a Strat or Tele, which takes off some of the edge, and even seems to increase the gain of te pickups somewhat, even on weaker winds. My VIntage Vibe 70's Jaguar has only 6.4K on the hottest pickup - that's stock STRAT impedance - but somehow, that bridge pickup growls up on a clean channel nicely....

A point of reference I had on this sound prior to a Jaguar with stock pickups was oddly, Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Ric had a Jaguar, and a Jazzmaster. On the 1980 Panorama tour, Elliot Easton found him an old beat up 64' Candy Apple Red Jaguar with matching headstock in a hock shop for $80. He took thsi guitar on that tour and said he "wished I'd brought the other one (Jazzmaster) because it sounds "cleaner". So I listened to bootlegs and while Ric was a little off (he DID use the Jazzmaster on that tour, there's even photos of a show from 1980 with both him AND Elliot playing Jazzmasters live at the same time....based on tone, I'd say it was the Milwaukee show). The Bootlegs with the Jaguar are a little mroe nasally, duffy, and distorted sounding, and Ric played with a clean tone most of the time. Getting through is about the cleanest that Jaguar was. My Best Friend's Girl was on the border of Overdrive - on an AMPEG V-FRICKIN-4. An Ampeg V4 is a VERY high headroom amp, so if a Jag is overdriving it like that, there's more to the gain on those guitars than just the ohms of the pickups. I too have a very clean clean tone, similiar to a twin, the Jag adds some growl to it - both of em - so I think the claws and the magnetic field plays a bit of a role in that sound.

Jazzmasters, while indeed hotter wound, and cleaner, have a nice natural midrange scoop due to the pickups. Another explaination I can curate from Ric Ocasek is that he liked the Ampeg V4 because he could twist up the midrange to make it cleaner, and also said he used his Jazzmaster on every album, all the time. So he has a gutiar with a naturally scooped midrange, run through an amp where he can twist it up a bit, and and this creates a really good, flat sound that plays well in the studio without a whole lot of tweakage to sound right. So in a hard-rock context, a Jazzmaster through a high gain amp sounds a LOT like a middle-ground between a Les PAul Special, and a Telecaster. It has all the spank and twang of the Tele, but with the powerful low end of a Gibson....that's a really nice (and unique combo)....and a cool trick with the Jazzmaster is if you back off the lead volume on the bridge pickup, you can get something crunchier, and warmer, and more traditional, and with higher gain, puts you right in the same territory as a Flying V or Les Paul.