Thinline Fender Jaguar

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There is a Jaguar Thinline and noone ever told me!

Ach ja, it's from Fender Japan, they have much cooler Fenders there for some reason, with plenty of Mustang variations,  Teles with Filtertrons, colors you've never seen on a Fender... Check their website and cry!

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Höfner HE179 Jazzmaster-esque evaluation model

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Now here's a Höfner guitar that I've not seen before. And no wonder, it's what they call an "evaluation model". I think that means "prototype" to you and me.

Here's what the seller has to say about it:

Höfner HE179, Jazzmaster style evaluation model, mint condition, in original carton very rare. In 2003 Höfner designers came up with a jazzmaster styled model in very limited number (apprx 50) which were sent out to specific dealers for evaluation across the World. Perhaps not wishing to go up head to head with Fender on the similarities of the jazzmaster, Höfner decided not to proceed. [...] Maple body, with rich sunburst finish, Grover tuners, stop tailpiece and adjustable tuneomatic bridge, 3 way pickup switch, volume and 2 tone controls, fully bound neck and headstock. Pickups are a pair of stonking Gibson-style humbuckers (which look suspiciously like a set of Lindy Fralin Nickels), fully pole-adjustable, these produce a mighty punch. One of these guitars found its way to Oz last year and fetched over £1000 on Oz Ebay.

So, there you have it. Personally I wouldn't have thought that the body shape would put Höfner "head to head with Fender", as plenty of other manufacturers have borrowed this same body style. I'm also not too keen on the 3+3 headstock design with this body shape; it looks a tad incongruous.

Whatever, it would seem to be quite an individual guitar for the player who doesn't want to have the same axe as everyone else, and the Buy It Now price of £340 seems very reasonable.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

You can never have too many necks

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I bet you thought was going to be about one of those Rick Nielson multi-neck Cheap Shot guitars eh? I should coco! This is something I haven't come across too often before. Fender is a company I don't readily associate with doubleneck guitars. In fact I don't think I've knowingly seen any before - not that I've been looking, I have to add. The only Fenderish doubleneck I've happened across recently is the handsome, though not actually from Fender per se, creation from the skilful hands of young Bertram (with a little help from one of his woodworking associates). We have a fondness for the Fender Bass VI here in Guitarzland so it's an even bigger delight to find one Siametically co-joined to another of our favourites - the Fender Jazzmaster.

It's on the Austrian eBay site and I don't speak German. Maybe Bertram can help out with some of the details. As far as I can make out, it's a newish - 2010 - model, one-off, masterbuilt by Dennis Galuska (who's probably famous - sorry Den, not terrible au fait with the world of Lutherie) for the Frankfurt Musicmesse 2010 (that's a bit unfortunate isn't it, Musicmesse? Not really encouraging, eh? Probably means fair, exhibition or show or something similar. Maybe we should let them know. Might improve attendance a bit).

By the way, the body is lightweight ash with maple necks and rosewood fingerboards with Nitrocellulose lacquer - NOS (I thought that meant New Old Stock. Probably something else in German).

Amazingly enough (to me at least) it seems Yngwie Malmsteen also played a Fender double-neck 12/6 (probably very fast and very proficiently). That sounded a bit sarcastic didn't it? At least he's not Steve Vai. No, I didn't mean it. OK, YM isn't really my cup of tea, I'll admit, but until this week I'd have said the same about Steve Vai. Until... I Youtubed some of his performances and was a little surprised. Maybe it's a big act, I don't know, but he seems a nice guy, a great showman, a big ham, doesn't take himself too seriously (for a rock star) and plays with a ferocious passion. I'm not gonna rush out and buy his back catalogue but I don't mind anyone knowing I now have one of his tracks on my iPod - the Crazy Horses/Edgar Winter tinged-one-riff-all-the-way-through "Bad Horsie". It's only Rock N Roll etc... Stupid faces and all.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all. Taken my own sweet time to get back into second gear this year, sorry all.

David in Barcelona where the weather isn't too bad although it's a bit soon for the beach.

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Warmoth Split Jazzmaster

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's the second of Dillon's guitars:

The blue guitar here is a custom job, built by the good folks at Warmoth. It's their original split Jazzmaster design, named obviously for the 'split' pickguard. I've been a fan of the Fender body styles every since I started playing, but I felt like I needed something a little more radical; I already had a Strat and a Tele, so the logical progression was obviously the Jazzmaster shape. I put it together about a year ago now, and it's my pride and joy. It's got an HSH pickup configuration with a single-coil-sized humbucker in the middle, though I'm planning on swapping it out for a true single coil as soon as I get the chance. The neck is birdseye maple with a compound neck radius, which is amazingly comfortable and pretty nice to look at too.

It's an interesting variation on a classic design, and a fantastic looking guitar. Thanks for showing us!

I'd just like to ask, is the upper pickguard purely cosmetic, or is there routing in the body beneath for switches (should you want them)?

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

ESP Custom Shop XJ-12

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I started the month with a series of Electric 12-string guitars, and today would like to show you yet another example from more recent years. It's an ESP XJ-12 built in ESP's Japanese custom shop circa 2003 for the Japanese market. According to the listing on eBay, these guitars were sold in Japan at 200,000 Yen in 2003 (about $2,400).

The style is obviously Jazzmaster/Jaguar influenced; in fact it reminds me of Hohner's professional Hollywood series of several years ago. The headstock with its 4+8 tuner arrangement is an unusual but attractive feature.

This seller has several of these in different finishes; I found the gold sparkle edition, pictured above, particularly eye-catching. In the photo of the translucent green XJ-12 below we can see another interesting little detail in the Strat-type output socket inset into the edge of the guitar - especially useful if you like to have your guitar lead angled upwards and tucked behind your guitar strap.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Alvino Rey (and not to mention Stringy the talking steel guitar!)

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's an email from Alan:

Hello from Washington DC USA.

Two slick videos I wanted to tell you about featuring Alvino Rey - a steel guitarist popular from the '40s thru the '60s. One (see above) features "Stringy", a singing puppet fronting for a vocalist going through a Sonovox. Bands of the 1940s routinely did these early "music videos" that ran in movie theaters.

The fun starts around the 0:42 sec mark.

The second shows Alvino on the "King Family" TV show of the 1960s - a very safe, family-friendly music variety show of that era. What makes it cool is seeing Alvino slinging a state of the art Fender solid-body instead of a nice, dignified archtop jazzbox; almost a blasphemy on a "family" TV show such as this.

In black and white it's hard to tell what the actual color of this guitar is. Since TV of that era couldn't handle *pure* white (it would blow the picture out), I want to pretend it's a Lake Placid Blue, an Ivory, or some kinda yellow.

Enjoy.
-AP

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Left-handed Telemaster

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I like to post blog entries about interesting left-handed guitars - as and when I find them. After all, left-handed people deserve to have a better choice of interesting guitars. The off-the-shelf choices are so limited that some southpaws end up seeking out custom instruments.

This oil-finished left-handed Telemaster looks to be one such instrument, a self-build perhaps. The Telemaster - as its name suggests - is a hybrid of a Telecaster and a Jazzmaster. That is, a Telecaster with a Jazzmaster body. Or is that a Jazzmaster with Telecaster routing and hardware? It's actually a guitar with a bit of a cult following amongst self-builders, guitar projecteers and custom builders. A quick Google search will turn up loads of them!

This auction finishes in just a couple of hours, so if any interested lefties are reading, you might want to snap it up quickly.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

MOJO magazine ask you to name Dengue Fever's doubleneck

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L.A.'s Dengue Fever - described by MOJO as playing "Cambodian party pop from the pre-Khmer Rouge swinging '60s" - are inviting readers to bestow a name upon the unique instrument pictured here. The strange amalgam of Fender Jazzmaster and Chapei Dong Veng (a traditional Cambodian two-stringed guitar) was created by friend of the band Mel Bergman and it now needs a name.

The reader who submits the best name will take home signed vinyl copies of DF's Escape and Venus albums, while a runner-up will win all four of the band's LPs on CD. The band will choose the winners.

Enter here

(Thanks to Mark Bannister for bringing this to my attention).

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Goya Panther

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This Goya Panther is described as a "Fender style Jaguar" which it leans towards but, thankfully it isn't just a copy. It is a lovely looking guitar despite have lost a fair amount of paint off the front. A plus for lovers of relic guitars. A bit of a shame for the rest of us. Never mind. I shan't be blathering on about my dislike of relicism so don't worry.

A little bit of info from the seller's Goya information site on Tripod - "The Goya Rangemasters electric guitars were produced between 1965 - 1969. The 'Goya' brand name was used at various times by Hershman Musical Instrument Company of New York, an importing firm, and as was so often the case with distribution companies one brand name turns up on guitars from a number of different sources. The Rangemaster model, for example, is of Italian origin, reflecting a 1960s predilection for multiple control layouts and most likely comes from the EKO factory. The vibrato bar, however, was provided by another Goya supplier, the Hagstrom company of Sweden. NOTE: Someone informed me that they had talked with a production manager from EKO in the 60s who said they had no involvement with Goya. That same person suggested to me that the Polverini Brothers in Italy made the Rangemaster guitars. It has also been suggested that Italian guitar maker Galanti made the Goya Panther models. The Goya Panther and the Galanti guitars look nearly identical."

A cool looking guitar with some history.

David in Barcelona

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Robert Smith's custom Fender Jazzmaster

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Robert Smith is famous (amongst guitarists) for his versatility in his guitar choices: for about twenty years - until he finally got his signature guitar by Schecter in 2004, the very appealing Ultracure - he's been changing guitar regularly (Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, National, Hopf, Ovation, Guild, Vox, Mosrite..., all of them black or refinished in black), and from one tour to the next you can see him changing his sound sometimes radically with a different instrument - also in one set he could switch from solid body to semi-hollow to acoustic to 12-string... He's been faithful though to the Fender bass VI that have been essential to the Cure's early sound, but it seems (I'm not sure and I'd like to know more about this) that he's been using lately a one-off Ultracure baritone instead.

But I've been interested lately in his early sound and I realized that his best music (I belong to the people who think that the Cure's best drummer was Lol Tolhurst but this makes sense only for Cure's old school fans) has been composed and played on a customized 1965 Fender Jazzmaster - with the addition in middle position of the neck pickup teared off a plywood cheapo - the Silvertone 313 sold by Woolsworth as the Top 20 (Smith's guitar until 1979, on the picture on the right). I really love this kind of spirit, and laugh at all these tone fetishists who would purchase high-end pickups to upgrade already expensive guitars just to reproduce a vintage sound heard a million times, when one of the most influential musicians of our time created his sound with the lowest grade material!

Originally there's been two of these custom Jazzmasters, the backing one was beige and became the main one, refinished first in white, then in black, and used to record Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography and The Top... I could tell several anecdotes, like Smith chose the Jazzmaster because he saw Elvis Costello playing one on TV, or that he paid his first one 100£ after his producer claimed that he couldn't record an album with his Top 20, or that the guitar was used again for the Trilogy concert in 2003 to play Pornography extensively with its original sound - but if you want this kind of details, you can pick them on impressionofsounds.com or wikicure.com (in French).

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Fender Jaguar Special HH

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The Fender Jaguar Special HH could seem not so special - well, it's just another Jaguar -, but - beside its name - it's very special to me since I'm the proud and happy owner of one of these babies.

It was love at he first sight (and I was a Fender hater until then - now I'm just a strat hater) after being faithful for about 20 years to my Rickenbacker 620 and my Ovation Breadwinner! It has a kind of perfect look, not with the classicism of a Les Paul or a ES-175, but in its own twisted way despite the venerable age of the Jaguar (see the previous Jaguar post).

So the HH (as it's often nicknamed) has the usual design, 24' scale and typical complex electronics of a Jaguar, but it's mounted with Fender's Dragster Humbuckers - sounding really superb - and a tune-o-matic style stop tail (official name is Adjust-o-matic, must be American humor). It has a simple black nitro finish and black pickguard and lots of chrome, and a super cool 1969 strat headstock with vintage tuners. You put your fingers on the neck and they start to play on their own and to do things you didn't know you can do.

It was made in Japan in the 2000s, and I found contradictory information about it being exclusive to the Japanese market or not. I thought so for a long time and it was sold to me as an import - and you don't see it so often around -, but this is not mentioned on the Fender website so it's doubtful. There is also a baritone version (a real baritone, not a 6-string bass), that I will accept as a present any time.

bertram


Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Henman Bevilacqua S1

guitarz.blogspot.com

With this Jazzmaster-looking Henman-Bevilacqua S1, Henman Guitars proposes an interesting combination of classicism and... well, I cannot say modernism or high-tech, since electric guitar is ontologically modern and high-tech, so let's say progressiveness. You could say that there's nothing new in the two humbuckers (tappable though) and Bigsby trem but if you look closely at all the details, you will see that this guitar has clearly something (I just wish they wouldn't spoil a transparent black finish with a figured maple top when the body is made of solid mahogany...). 

If you are interested in this Hen-Bev S1, go and have a look at their website, they have plenty of technical specs about stuff like their avant-garde tuners and truss rod, plus a couple of video demos that allows you to hear its terrific sound (very rock/blues though - but it seems that it's what 99% of players expect - ah, and someone should tell the demo player that an emo haircut after 21 is pathetic).

About the Jaguar/Jazzmaster design, it's strange but I have to admit that though it's been introduced in 1958 - shortly after the Telecaster (50), the Les Paul (51) and the Stratocaster (54) - and widely spread in the 60s by European companies (mostly Italian and German), it didn't turn into a boring cliché but kept a radical feel - probably because it wasn't overexploited by Fender. So Henman played it safe when they chose this design, both familiar and with a maverick spirit.  

bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!