paul_ wrote:
I think Jag-Stang necks are indeed unique to Jag-Stangs as far as Fender Japan is concerned. Having said that, they are very old-fashioned Mustang necks... specifically a clone of the A width option neck that was on Kurt's favorite Mustang (the comp blue '69), an available option back in the day, like 22.5" scale or custom colours. The most common vintage (pre-1962) width and the standard reissue width for such Fenders is "B" which is 1 5/8" (41-ish mm) and they went wider from there to C (1 11/16" which is the modern standard) and D (1 7/8")
It is only it's own thing among Japanese reissue Mustang necks since, as far as I know, no other reissue Mustangs have ever had an A-width neck. You could get virtually the same thing on vintage Mustangs, MM IIs and Duo IIs... but of course you had more inconsistencies from guitar to guitar back then so you could technically still say that the JS neck is "it's own thing", a metric Japanese 24" A-width.
I can confirm, I'm still using the Jag-Stang as my #1, and it's backup is a 1971 Fender Music Master, the neck is almost 100% identical on that Music Master. Even feels extremely close to the same. I think the Jag-Stang's neck was based on Kurt Cobain's 1969 Competition Mustang. But that said, I think Fender might have adopted that profile for their 69' reissues at some point as I've played 2-3 of those that felt darn close to my Jag-Stang as well. Played a MIJ Jaguar the same year as my Jag-Stang, and the back profile is not even close.
The Jag-Stang was not a successful guitar outside of the built-in audience it had from Cobain/Nirvana devotees, and even that only really sustained it for about a year. It was only sold for 8 non-consecutive years in the US, and any store that stocked Fenders always had like 5 or 6 at a time even a couple years later because nobody was biting. When they stopped bringing CIJs into the US in the late '90s they bumped the price of the 69 Mustangs to $650 but left the JS at $450 to try and get rid of the damn things (I remember because that's when I bought one, not being able to afford the Mustang).
I still have the JS I got in '98. It's biggest problem is that it is LAZY. To make the bridge pickup sound remotely good you need to put at least 500k pots in it (this in conjunction with a Super Distortion worked well enough for me) at which point the stock bucker is shown up as a bit shitty and the neck pickup doesn't sound as good anymore. Why nobody at Fender did this better in the first place is beyond me apart from the fact that Kurt probably just stuck buckers in his vintage/reissue Mustangs without changing the pots (which is probably why those sounded a bit flat and shitty compared to his Jaguar) and they just didn't go way out of the way to do anything he didn't ask them to (apart from avoiding a deal with Duncan just to end up with a wildly mismatched set like a hotrail and Mustang neck pickup). It's just not a well-thought out guitar, they stuck an ugly body and a humbucker on a Mustang and called it a day. The neck was the only part Kurt really cared about, but I think he quickly realized that he'd made a huge mistake with everything else. People laugh when they see Jag-Stangs. They're funny looking.
Five or Six at a time? Jeebuz, you must have lived in L.A. or New York or something like that. I lived in the middle of East Alabama, near Auburn University, only ever saw TWO Jag-Stangs in my entire life. Funny enough, I've lived in Seattle for 12 years - I have yet to see one Jag-Stang in the entire area that's not my guitar. Kind of hilarious since that's where the creator is from. Still they did not sell very well at all. The two that passed through Alabama when I lived there, I bought one of them (the one with EMG pickups), and I played a stock 98.
I think the mistake Fender made on the Jag-Stang was not so much low-effort as much as it was focusing effort in the wrong spots. Like they tried to compensate for the naturally wooly sound by putting a anemic 7.48K Humbucker in the bridge of the production version. Why? That's not even CLOSE to what Kurt has. I'm listening to Kurt playing a Jag-Stang in Milan Italy right now, and it sounds closer to my guitar than a stock production Japanese Jag-Stang. They should have put a DiMarzio Evolution or Super Distortion in it, not an overwound Humbucker from Hell (a really anemic humbucker DiMarzio makes for people who want single coil sound from their Les Paul or whatever), put in 500K pots, and screw pickup balance, 90% of those grunge rock guys never used the neck pickup anyway, or when they did, I don't think they really paid that much attention to "balance" so much as just what it sounded like. That kind of metalhead/blues lawyer level obsessing only happens with grunge in today's landscape by kids whom were not even alive then and just don't "get it". The whole genre was based on a garage borne rat-rod guitar aesthetic that today is looked at as being a "piece of shit" because "science".
Fender did not use Seymour Duncan because they had a deal with DiMarzio at the time. It probably would have been breech of contract. At the time, Fender had TWO signature models using DiMarzio pickups - Ritchie Sambora, and Yngwie Malmsteen. both of those guys shredder guys from the 80's. Fender started using Seymour Duncan in the early 2000's. You'll notice the original Jag-Stangs were marketed as having DiMarzio H3 or H8 pickups, while the reissues from the 2000's had a Fender Santa Ana Humbucker. Though for all I know Fender could have been snowing us this whole time and they were the same pickup in both versions.
Also it's not the nicest neck ever, in an absolute sense... for ripping out beginner versions of alt-rock songs using root power chords only, perhaps. It's small... that's about it. It can be a bit cumbersome on complex chords low down the fretboard and I can certainly imagine it's not for everyone given that a lot of Norlin-era Gibson necks were incredibly similar and a lot of people hate those (not me, just saying such people exist out there in the wild). On that note I have a '72 SG-II which has just as good a neck as the JS and is therefore 4x the guitar as it also sounds and looks great.
Fair enough. The Jag-Stang neck is still my favorite, but I do have a second favorite that comes close and does have lower action, and surprisingly, it's on a Hondo designed by Loverboy's lead guitarist Paul Dean. the Hondo Paul Dean II has a 1" Nut width - thinner than the Jag-Stang, and a 9" fretboard radius. I leveled and recrowned the frets on mine, it plays like a bloody fretless wonder. The Jag-Stang still wins though, whammy bar plus I kind of like the feel of the Jag-Stang neck just as much even though it's way different (the Paul Dean gets a lot thicker toward the upper frets, the Jag-Stang is a bit more consistant up and down the neck - but the Paul Dean has RESONANCE SLOTS...and they do work and is a part of why that guitar sound unique).
Kurt's favorite guitar was a Japanese reissue 60s Custom Tele with buckers and a 6-saddle bridge fitted. I guess even he ultimately realized that it's pointless being marginally more comfortable with a neck when you sound like shit onstage.
I have a theory on this that part of this was not just to "perk Kurt up" but also because on the In Utero tour they had to talk Kurt out of smashing his Japanese Mustangs quite a bit. Back in 1994, Fender Mustang and Jaguar parts were not easy to get ahold of in the middle o Wyoming on a Sunday, and shipping new Mustangs in from Japan would have even back then been an arm and a leg FedEx overnight, an unnecessary expense to deal with on taxes if you can just stop Kurt from destroying the bloody things to begin with. Meanwhile, if Kurt smashed that Telecaster, Ernie would just slap on another Japanese Tele neck of the gazillions made and Kurt would be back in business with zero downtime.
I remember the first place online you could buy a Jaguar body - and it was not warmoth, it was some guy working out of his garage with a shitty one page website done in some early version of HTML. He was asking $195.00 for it, this was in 1995-1996.
