ShortScale.org

Check out my new guitar that I picked up earlier this week -- a Fender Classic Player Jaguar Special HH. This modern version of the Jaguar was introduced by Fender last month, and when I saw the specs, I knew I had to have one. I'm a short-scale player, and the 24" neck on this guitar is a dream:



The jangly single coils on vintage Jags have been replaced with hotter humbuckers, the bridge has been replaced with Fender's "Adjust-O-Matic" version of a Gibson "Tune-O-Matic" bridge (whoo hoo!), and the circuitry has been completely modernized. Here's the circuitry summary from Fender's website:

"Upper: Master Kill Slide Switch, Neck Pickup Humbucking/Single-Coil Blend Control, Bridge Pickup Humbucking/Single-Coil Blend Control;
Lower: Neck Pickup On/Off Slide Switch, Bridge Pickup On/Off Slide Switch, Normal/Low Cut Slide Switch"

So I get a kill switch, coil splitting, and a cut switch! Sweet! This guitar has tons of tonal options. Eventually, I'll probably want to go with some significantly hotter Dimarzios for both the bridge and the neck, but I'm not complaining. I think Fender did a great job of modernizing a classic guitar, kinda like Dodge re-releasing a 1970 Challenger but with air bags, anti-lock brakes, a modern AC system and BOSE stereo, and a more fuel efficient HEMI V-8.

Here are a few more photos:

Outside



Back Of Body



Bridge and Trem



Headstock

Nice Buy.

White and Tort is a delicious combo.

the coil splitting is pretty sweet but i would rather they keep the wiring the same and not do this weird shit

if you're going to do DiMarzio's [dont hate] look into a PAF Mo Joe and FRED

My only gripe so far is that the volume pot seems to be messed up. Instead of a nice logarithmic curve from 1 to 10, my volume pot goes exponentially from silent to screaming. 1 through 8.5 sounds pretty much the same (very, very quiet), and the pickups (clean or dirty, single coil or HB) don't come alive until 9.5 to 10.

GC is holding on to another model so I can do an A-B comparison. Other than this annoyance, however, I absolutely love this guitar.

Haze wrote:the coil splitting is pretty sweet but i would rather they keep the wiring the same and not do this weird shit

if you're going to do DiMarzio's [dont hate] look into a PAF Mo Joe and FRED

I think the decision to completely modernize the wiring scheme on the Classic Player Special HH was a smart move on Fender's part.

"Old School" wiring for "Old School" Jags, new school circuitry for Jags with TOM-style bridges and humbuckers.

Beautiful photos. The tort looks way nicer than it does in Fender's photographs.

Mike wrote:Beautiful photos. The tort looks way nicer than it does in Fender's photographs.

Thanks. It took me years to learn, but I finally realized that the best time to take pictures outdoors is when the sun is shining the brightest. Super bright light translates to nice photos. There were taken with a Nikon D40.

Yup, natural light is the way forward.

Thanks for posting them, the guitar looks fantastic. I think they really hit one out of the park with teh switching options. Sorry to hear the volume pot taper seems odd. Does it say A or B on the back?

Good call on white instead of the douchey wannabe Kurt Cobain sunburst.

Helps to have great landscaping. Beauty, though.

is that a giant paint crack coming out from under the neck plate?

What's the radius on the Adjust-o-matic? Does it match the neck, or is it the typical tune-o-matic 14"? (at least that's what I think TOM's have for a radius).

theshadowofseattle wrote:Good call on white instead of the douchey wannabe Kurt Cobain sunburst.

if it come sin sunburst, I dont konw if ill be able to resist much longer.

lolz


this ain't harmony central, NGDz, lolz.

Nice guitar.

robroe wrote:is that a giant paint crack coming out from under the neck plate?

LOL. No, that was a lone piece of plastic covering I couldn't pull off the neck plate. It was actually very small, but because of the angle of the sun, it cast a HUGE shadow. I didn't realize it was there until after I had taken the shot. If you look real close, you can see the plastic just above the lower-right-hand screw.

It pissed me off so much the next day when I saw the "blemish" that I loosened the offending screw and used some tweezers to yank out the plastic.

I still have a couple of small pieces of plastic stuck to the pickup screws on the pick guard. They're driving me crazy too, but it'll be a while before I can take care of them.

astro wrote:What's the radius on the Adjust-o-matic? Does it match the neck, or is it the typical tune-o-matic 14"? (at least that's what I think TOM's have for a radius).

A typical Gibson TOM has a 12" radius to match the 12" fretboard radius. The Fender "Adjusto-Matic" bridge has a 9.5" radius (which perfectly matches the fretboard on the Jaguar). When Cobain use to modify his vintage Jags, he was forced to use a 12" radius TOM, which meant that the low and high "E" strings were much higher off the fingerboard than the middle strings.

My other minor grip with this guitar is that the cutouts on *all* of the saddles aren't deep enough: it's quite easy to pull a string off the saddle when you're stretching it. Fixing this is straightforward, but you need to make a consistent fix across all the saddles to maintain a 9.5" curvature.

aen wrote:if it comes in sunburst, I dont know if I'll be able to resist much longer.

Dude...you're in trouble...because it *DOES* come in sunburst!

Great ready to break out your VISA card. Behold:

Lovely guitar - I'd love it if they made them in lefty...oh well...

What's a NGD?

The metal looks very chrome-y. Is it chromed like the AV reissues, or just plain steel like the Japanese ones? Are these Mexican Jags cheaper than the Japanese anyway?