NGD - The Thinline Jaguar Came Home Today

[ellengtrgrl]

Well, I bought the Thinline Jaguar I posted about a few weeks ago, home today. I only had a couple of weeks left on the layaway. The hoped for profit sharing bonus from work did not materialize. So rather than give up on the guitar (I really wanted it), I traded my Thinline Tele, my Danelectro MOD 7, 7-string, my Seagull 12-string acoustic, threw in some money from today's paycheck, and brought the Thinline Jag home. Here she is (crappy photo quality and all, courtesy of my semi-cheap digital camera - it doesn't do justice to the 3-tone sunburst IMO):




The neck plays like a million bucks, but one thing has to go - those wimpy 10s that are on it. I have a set of 12s (D'Addario EPS590 Pro Steels w/ a wound G), and they should address what is to me the semi-mushy playing feel the guitar has. I'll put them on tomorrow. Sound-wise, the pickups remind me a bit of the '62 AVRI Jag I tried out last year. They're a bit lower in output, than the pickups my CP Jag had. They're also a little bit brighter sounding, than the CP's were - turning down the treble on my Trace Elliot Super Tramp, helped deal with this. It has nice snarl, when the gain is jacked up. Now I just need to spend some time getting some decent grind out of it. I think I'll try out the pickups for a while, before I make any decision to do a pickup swap. I hated having to give up some guitars, but it was well worth it for this guit, IMO.

[willc]

Very classy looking guitar.
The binding balances things out nice on it.
Not much of a fan of the thinline tele look but this actually works for me.

[ekwatts]

Danelectro MOD 7, 7-string

SSWWWWEEEEETT FUUUUUUUUCK

[NickS]

Ow. Nice guitar, but that's a lot of stuff you got rid of. Still, pointless to mourn. Poast moar pic!

[ekwatts]

Honestly, the Thinline Jag in my opinion is better than any of those guitars individually (even the Dano Mod, which is as rare as rocking horse shit), but it was probably still a painful sacrifice to make.

I love the Thinline Jag SOOOOOO much. If only they made it with filtertrons and a tunomatic so I didn't have to buy a £1100+ guitar and carve it up.. Y'alls need to stop buying them or I'll never get my hands on one. Although the sunburst seems to be the most popular which isn't a problem as I think the black one is sexier. Apart from those white pickup covers LOL WHAT

[ellengtrgrl]

Thanks guys! Tonight I'm putting the 12s on my Jag. It'll not only play better, but have a bit more punch note attack-wise. Unlike other Jags I've owned in the past, I have this terrible urge to play "Pipeline" with the guitar! Maybe it's due to the fact that of all of the Jags I've had over the past 22 years (3, excluding the Blacktop), the pickups in the Thinline sound the closest to the ones in a '62 AVRI. BTW, I don't know if it's my imagination or not, but it seems to me, that the headstock on my Thinline Jag, is the biggest Fender headstock I've ever seen!

As for my old MOD 7 - I had it for a bit under a year and a half. They're not very common, but if you look, they can be found (I got mine online from a GC in Arkansas, that had no idea what they really had). It was a great antidote to boring Super-Strat 7 strings. But, in retrospect, I do think its 25" scale length was a bit on the short side (I preferred the 26.5" scale length my old Schecter Omen Extreme 7 had), and the switchology for pickup selections was a bit confusing. While you could select every pickup combination imanginable, the selection sequencing on the 6 position rotary selector switch, did not seem at all logical to me. It also had a coil splitter for the bridge humbucker, and, the VERY cool blow switch feature. Flipping on the blow switch, basically wired all 4 pickup coils into one BIG humbucker, with insane output (I found the output comparable to the EMG 81s I had in a guitar back in the early 90s). When finances settle down, I plan on getting another 7-string (preferrably with a longer scale length), or an 8-string (I've played a few, and they're a lot of fun - I'm just not sure how I'd incorporate them into my playing repertoire). Here's my old MOD 7. The picture was taken by me, in my office at work, on the day the guitar arrived (I have UPS stuff shipped to my workplace - I've had a few bad experiences with residential shipment by UPS). :

[azscr4mbl3r]

Both are very nice probably hard to pick which one to play eh?

-Allen

[speedfish]

Well, I bought the Thinline Jaguar I posted about a few weeks ago, home today. I only had a couple of weeks left on the layaway. The hoped for profit sharing bonus from work did not materialize. So rather than give up on the guitar (I really wanted it), I traded my Thinline Tele, my Danelectro MOD 7, 7-string, my Seagull 12-string acoustic, threw in some money from today's paycheck, and brought the Thinline Jag home. Here she is (crappy photo quality and all, courtesy of my semi-cheap digital camera - it doesn't do justice to the 3-tone sunburst IMO):




The neck plays like a million bucks, but one thing has to go - those wimpy 10s that are on it. I have a set of 12s (D'Addario EPS590 Pro Steels w/ a wound G), and they should address what is to me the semi-mushy playing feel the guitar has. I'll put them on tomorrow. Sound-wise, the pickups remind me a bit of the '62 AVRI Jag I tried out last year. They're a bit lower in output, than the pickups my CP Jag had. They're also a little bit brighter sounding, than the CP's were - turning down the treble on my Trace Elliot Super Tramp, helped deal with this. It has nice snarl, when the gain is jacked up. Now I just need to spend some time getting some decent grind out of it. I think I'll try out the pickups for a while, before I make any decision to do a pickup swap. I hated having to give up some guitars, but it was well worth it for this guit, IMO.

I've said if before and will say it again, that is the tuxedo of Jaguars. Exquisitely classy!

Congratulations!

[moore65]

It's been said before, but that was a lot you had to trade in to get the Jag :/

[ellengtrgrl]

It's been said before, but that was a lot you had to trade in to get the Jag :/

Probably, but I was willing to take a hit value-wise on trading in gear, to get this guitar.

[kim]

they pulled jags into the thinline series ? wt....


but hope you enjoy it still, tastes differ

[singlepup]

Pretty sweet. I love how light the thinlines are. Glad someone besides paulkd1ck scored one of these.

[ellengtrgrl]

Well, I re-strung the guitar last night, and IMO, it significantly improved things both playability-wise, and sound-wise. The playing feel is nice and taut. As for the sound - it was late when I finished up (almost 9:30 PM), but I spent about 20 minutes before bedtime, playing the Jag, to help break in the strings. I received a few pleasant surprises:


1. Sustain was improved markedly. It still doesn't sustain like a Tele or a Les Paul, but it almost hangs with a Strat in this department.

2. As would be expected with heavier strings, the note attack is a bit punchier.

3. Sonically, the guitar has more beef to it. The brightness has noticeably lessened, and the bass response has increased. It's not humbucker or even P90 beef, but (to me at least) it sounds gutsier than a Strat. As a result, clean sounds are warmer (the twang is still there - but it's not overpowering), and jacking up the gain, elicits nice sounding crunch and metallic grind. The Thinline Jag's a great punk rock tone machine. It sounded killer playing "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones (which was the first tune I played on it). Can it do metal tones? Possibly, but extreme (as in death) metal tones may be a bit on the iffy side.
But, one pleasant discovery, was the way this guitar takes to alternative heavy rock, and grunge guitar tones like a duck to water - lots of that gnarly, single coil, metallic tone in spades! Hellooo tunes by Tad! Any body game for playing "Jinx"?


I think I'll stick with the stock pickups for now. I'm surprised that the string change made such an improvement. I've never had that happen before. I'm not sure if it's due to just an increase in string size, and/or the change from my usual nickel-steel strings (D'Addario EXL) to a steel alloy string (no nickel - D'Addario Prosteels). I wish it hadn't been so late last night, I would have spent more time playing, but the 4:45 AM wake up time for work, put a damper on playing much longer.

If I have time this weekend, I'll try to do some clips of the guitar in action (let me know if you have any requests), and post them.

[markarkark]

this looks so good. how much do you reckon it weighs roughly?

[ellengtrgrl]

this looks so good. how much do you reckon it weighs roughly?

Not really sure - about 7 or 8 lbs. It feels a bit lighter than my CP or my 66 Reissue were.

[singlepup]

Demo Teenage Kicks! Would be good to hear some of those alt rock tones too