creepingnet's Reviews

I picked these up last weekend (6/25/17) - Great replacements for my Sonics

My #1 problem with headphones is I'm HARD on them - it seems the only stuff that holds up well is either vintage stuff, or rather robust/ruggedized stuff. Well, I think I found it in these.

These headphones are not like a modern pair of headphones, they are not really an audiophile devices so much as they are great - at least to me - for Mixing. Because They give a very, sort of in the middle sound quality, which works well for mixing things down and making them sound good on crap. One of the best recordings I ever mixed was back in 2006 using a pair of cheap dollar store headphones. I think I found something almost as good but much better built here, as I like my mixes to sound great on a midrangey little device like a cell phone or an old transistor radio, as I would on a 3D stereo enabled system.

Another rock solid axe from Fender Japan

I bought my Jaguar in December of 2005, it's a 1998 Model built at the Dyna Gakki plant for Fender Japan in December 97' (Neck Date), and January 98' (Body Date). I bought mine already customized.

SPECIFICATIONS (STOCK)

NECK: Maple neck, 24" scale, 22 Vintage frets, pearl dot inlays 7.16" Fretboard radius, Kluson Ping replication tuning machines

BODY: Basswood, or Alder (mine's Alder) Jaguar style body with vintage routing

PICKUPS: 2 Fender 62' Jaguar reissue single coils, 6.4K Each, Alnico V or Ceramic Magnets

CONTROLS: Separate Rhythm and Lead Circuits, Rhythm volume, Rhythm Tone, Rhythm/Lead Selector Switch, neck pickup on/off (Lead), bridge pickup on/off (lead), Strangle/Bass Cut (lead), Lead volume, Lead tone

BRIDGE/TAILPIECE: Fender Floating Vibrato with rocker bridge with adjustable string spacing

COLORS AVAIL/COLOR COMBOS 3 Tone Sunburst w/ Tortishell Pickguard Olympic White w/ Tortishell Pickguard Candy Apple Red w/ W/B/W pickguard and Matching Headstock 3-Tone Sunburst Foto Flame (fake Flame Kodak overlay on body under finish) w/ red Tortishell White Blonde finish w/ Red Tortishell Pickguard and gold hardware

Mine came from the Guitar Hangar in December 05' with an unbranded Jaguar/Jazzmaster hardshell case, modified with a pair of Seymour Duncan SCR1B Cool Rails, 500K pots in the lead circuit (tone being a push/pull coil split for the cool rails), and a Gibson ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic filed down to fit the fretboard radius.

The original Cool Rails were found to sound so close to Jaguar pickups in timbre with the 500K pots I chose to leave those in, and put cut-off Jaguar pickup covers and Jaguar claw side-pieces onto them - all that did was redistribute the magnetic field a bit just bringing the tone more inline with a Jaguar, but with hum cancellation.

I also took out that crappy Tune-O-Matic that was chopping my hand up and eating up the strings (I use the vibrato on this guitar, HARD and OFTEN), and replaced it with a bridge identical to the one that the Japanese Jaguars regularly come with. I did, however, take some time learning the hows and whys of the Jaguar bridge on my own and came up with my own way of dealing with said bridge and it's so laughably simple. Basically, I play my Jaguar with .009's on it - most people say to put 11's or higher on them because they are short scale and heavier strings stay in place - but they actually don't because beyond a certain point, the strings being too big for the slots (especially the Low E which is the #1 culprit in this problem) can cause them to jump the saddles even more than light strings would at lighter tension because there is less material deep enough to hold them in place.

The second problem with this bridge that people misunderstand is the breakover angle, anything 10 degrees and over is sufficient enough string tension, the real problem is tolerances. The looser tolerances of guitar production say versus, something NASA would have made, are what really causes all the problems people think goes with breakover angle. Mastery gets around this by putting deeper saddles into their bridges as well as a pair of fixed allen key adjustments on a pivot for each pair of saddles. and Staytrem just uses Mustang-style saddles that are only rounded on top, cut to the radius of the guitar, and have nylon-embedded fixtures meant to hold them still. I do this on the Jaguar by cutting a strong humbucker spring in half - putting one half on the low E, the other on the High E, and angling the E string saddles upward on one side to wedge them in. Doing this makes it rock solid stable even without a shim or a breakover over 10 degrees, and it keeps the extra behind-the-bridge ringing that I love so much.

So far though, in the 10 years I've played this guitar, it's been an unstoppable companion. It's only broken one string at a gig, it's never broken down or spent a period of time in limbo due to parts. I did have to fix one grounding issue with the rhythm circuit and I replaced the tuners just as they were wearing out because those Ping manufactured Kluson copies just don't last - I put Kluson Revolutions in as I prefer seald gear durability but wanted to retain the split shafts and vintage look. I've hard the stock pickups these guitars have, honestly, mine more closely matches a Classic Player with the stock 60's wiring or a Squier VM due to the hotter bridge pickup.

And you'd think with all the pickup/electronics mods it'd sound different, but to tell you the truth, the Jaguar offers so much uniqueness in it's overall design that it sort of has a sound that transcends the pickups put in it because much of it's sound, the attack, the decay, the resonance, all the harmonic overtones from behind the bridge - are the result of that bridge system. All the pickups really do is amplify those things more if they are hotter. The cool rails just make it sound like a noiseless Jaguar. And sustain? I can make this thing sustain for days at stage volume using controlled feedback, and even then, plugged in, sustain is not really a problem at all on this guitar.

The only real cons are the original pickups I hear were not so great - microphonic, and tinny, probably due to incorrect construction, and the machine heads are crap. The rest of the complains most people have about the Jaguar I can look past because I know how to work with them or very frugally "fix" them in a way that does not affect the guitar or change it from what it is into another boring blahcaster. The EQ of the Cool rails might be what's making the 500K's work so well - aside from being quality switchcraft pots - as the Cool Rails have a tonal profile similar to a Jaguar except in ways that the 500K pots would help exaggerate to keep pushing the "overwound single coil" sound they are trying to emulate. Split I get more of a Goya/Teisco/Kawai/Sansui guitar sound, plinky, ice pickey, it's like 2 Jaguars in one - a Pre CBS with hot pickups (the first Jaguar I ever played), and a later CBS era model where they started winding them a bit less as hot.

And I'm not giving the 62' Reissue Jaguar high stars for mine alone. I've played quite a few other Japanese "62' Reissues" over the years and they have all been consistently great instruments. That's why the Jaguar became my #1 "off the rack guitar" - it's just buying my first one meant cutting cost by buying one modified, and then finding modding it back won't make any change serious enough to make it worth the money, leaving me with a bit of an "easter egg" from the previous owner via those Cool Rails.

And for those wondering on the Sound. The Typical Jaguar sound consists of a very balanced sounding neck pickup, and a very snarly, yarly, coarse sounding single coil in the back with tight lows and very present highs, together it sounds a bit like a Tele, but a little sweeter and floppier due to the shorter scale, a bit more harmonically rich. The Jaguar does have a fitting name, because, in the bridge especially, it has a very good "Bite" to it, especially when the gain is pushed, almost like a Gretsch with heavy overdrive, just not as sthick in the lower mids.

If you are used to a traditional setup, the Jaguar might be something you'd want to try out before buying because it does feel and play a bit differently, as well as the "duffy" or "tchak" type attack is not of the traditional electric guitar ilk in a lot of ways. It does not play like a Gibson or a Fender - it plays like a Jaguar, it's it's own thing capable of bringing something extra to all those it can emulate, and that's what I like about it.

I got this puppy cheap because nobody knows what the deal is with power supplies on them.....

I'd been shopping for more than a year for a decent, smaller, modeling amp for practicing and lugging around to jam at other places. One of these was this amp - the Blackstar IDCORE Stereo 10. Typically retailing at Guitar Center and Kennely Keys for $100. But I found one for $30 when the pawn shop I was at could not locate the power supply, or find one that worked.

The power supply is the major failing point of these amps - so much so here's a few pieces of wisdom I've been sharing online for awhile. To start, the original 6.5V 2.5ma power supply these came with has a tendency to burn out some internal connections to the transformer severing power connection. As a result, Blackstar started selling these with the 12V power adapter for the bigger versions of these amp (the IDCORE 20 and IDCORE 30 I presume?). Me - in my typical thrift-shop DIY fashion, I visisted 3-4 different stores and wound up locating a suitable power supply at goodwill - for a IOMEGA ZIP Drive! Only $0.99. I've been running it a megaton ever since, and have not experienced any problems at all.

The main thing drawing me to this amp was that it kills 2 birds with one stone - I get a good amp modeler I can use for home direct recording, and I get a practice amp I can lug around to various situations where a little 10 watt amp is more than sufficient. It being able to emulate my Bugera 333XL head in a smaller format is another part of why I chose this amp. The Crunch and Super Crunch are very close to that EL34 based sound if I dial it in just right. And it's plenty loud enough for my needs.

The Amp models on this amp include the following, and what I think they sound closest to.....

• Clean Warm has more of a Tweed Era Fender sound and broken up it gets a little bluesy. I use this for Bass quite a bit as it works great at emulating a Fender Bassman 410 Tweed, which is the sound I've preferred for my recording Bass sound for years - think 1980-1981 era Bucky Ballard (Billy Squier band) sound, like off of Rich Kid or The Big Beat. It gives out a nice growl when the gain is pushed, but it can be very clean as well.

• Clean Bright I suspect is aimed more toward the glassy, high-headroom, Fender Twin Reverb-esque sound. Think Robert Cray, or another good example would be the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus. Only thing is it WILL break up if pushed, giving it an extra realm of versitility, so it's not exactly as high headroom as I initially mentioned.

• Crunch - The classic rock-amp sort of tone. I'd liken it to sounding a lot like a dimed Plexi or a older JCM800 amp - which is EXACTLY in the realm of what I want tone-wise. The first time I tried one of these out, I used Crunch with a Squier VM Jaguar and kicked on chorus, very light 550ms stereo delay, and plate reverb and I was right at my sound right there in the store. This is also very close to the crunch channel on my 333XL head - which is part of why I bought this amp (a big part actually).

• Super Crunch - More gain than crunch, same general timbre, I liken it to the lead channel on my 333XL head. I usually use this to push more gain when using single coil guitars like my Jazzmaster, Tele, Harmony H-802, or a regular 3 single coil Stratocaster.

• OD1 - Hot Rodded Master Volume Overdrive - This is very much in the realm of a scooped-mid tone. One kind of interesting surprise was being able to dial in the tone I used back in my Nu-Metal days toward the end of high school. Not a lot of mids - more of a Godsmack/And Justice Era Metallica/Saliva type tone here. Has more of a response to me like a Mesa Boogie or a Krank, with a hint of Carvin X60A/X100B tone to it. Also great for Sabbath. Sort of in the angry KT-88/6L6 realm. It also works great for getting a good Kurt Cobain distortion emulation.

• OD2 - Mid Boosted Overdrive - This is more of a classic 80's metal kind of tone here, not in the Van-Halen crunch vein, but Early Metallica, Obsession, Slayer, Loverboy's guitar sound, very HiWatt but without that bluesy blattiness that a Hiwatt would normally have, either that or a modded/tweaked JCM800/JCM900 type amp. Dialed in just right it's a bloody doppleganger for Paul Dean's early 80's tone though - another pair of close relatives are W.A.S.P., Invasion of your Privacy era RATT, Under Lock and Key era Dokken....all great tones.

So there are 5 amp models, quite versatile considering how much stuff I can emulate not to mention recreate my own sounds from previous rigs I've had. It ISF control allows some rather quick fine-tuning of the sound rather than bugging around with a graphic EQ, turning it down gives more of a Warmer, Aggressive, USA type voice, turning it up gives a more "woody" "English" type voice.

The next part are the effects - you have 3 classes of effect on this amp, and only one variant of each may be used at a time - Modulation (Phaser, Flanger, Chorus, Tremolo), Delay (Linear/Analog/Tape/Multi), and Reverb (Room/Hall/Spring/Plate).

The Modulation was a huge thing because of two key effects I like, that very light, yet noticeable when present, chorus sound. A similar effect is the Eventide Harmonizer "Jape" setting that Edward Van-Halen used from Van-Halen II onward. It basically gives a bit of depth to the sound. But the chorus can do everything from that to full on "Come AS You Are" warbles if desired. The other sound was that low-tone-sweep Flanger sound that I get out of a Digitech TurboFlange or as Paul Dean of Loverboy got out of the Loft 450G rackmount Delay-Line Flanger in the 80's - Having those two things without external hardware is incredibly useful since I use both of them. The Phaser and Tremolo are great as well. Just having those two particular sounds alone that I use a lot was well worth over the $30 I paid for this thing.

For Delays, I tend to use the Multi and Linear the most - usually the Multi. The Multi-Delay is kind of neat in that a sort of "rhythmic" delay pattering outside (but in step with) the rhythm of what you are actually playing can be induced using the "Tap" button.

For Reverbs, I tend to prefer plate. An interesting note on most, if not all the reverbs on this amp, is their effect through the speakers - it really has a 3D type effect to it, I remember getting rather self-conscious both at the store and at home playing this thing through it's own speaker and hearing things coming from my left or right rather than from the amp like "WTF is that". I've seen this with quite a few of the Blackstar IDCORE series amps and it's quite impressive they could pull that off. That was one of those things this amp and it's bigger relatives impressed me with - the spatial-ness of this amp is something beyond compare to my ears.

Other features....

• It can act as a digital recording interface for various software. Actually, I reccommend that over using Line-in as the Line-in is grainy and a bit closer in quality to my old Behringer V-Amp Pro that I used for 11 years for home recording.

• The Line-in on it allows passthrough of other instruments so if you use a cheap, crappy, line-in based recording setup at home for making demos (one of the main reasons for this amp to kill 2 birds with one stone). I pass my keyboard through it to save all the plugging/unplugging of my gear all the frickin' time since it's more capturing inspiration than making some kind of album recording (though I can do that well as well).

• An upside and a downside is the IDCORE Software, you need it to update the firmware, and you need an older flip-phone mini-USB cable to do it (I luckily still had one from my Motorola W375 Net10 Phone from 12 years ago, glad I stashed that outdated piece of kit for future use). However, the software is reliable, it does not mess up your presets when saving them, and it offers a more intuitive interface with finer control over presets than setting them through the amp directly - but one thing I must say about presets via the amp itself - there's almost NO way to make this thing sound terrible (unless you're just terrible or very limited as a player). This is a long way away from what I started out on 22 years ago - when "practice amp" meant some 15 watt 2 channel combo based off a LM386 op-amp with just clean and overdrive channels that sound similar except one has a distortion pedal built into it.

Either way, my new favorite of the sub 20 Watt amplifier genre.

My Stage & Studio Jack of All Trades

While more recently wideley accepted as a "Deluxe Bass" - it seems in the years prior to the past few, this bass was a "whatchamacallit" - is it a Baritone? A Bass? Both? The answer is Yes.

I sold my Fender Mustang guitar and Bass and replaced it with this after seeing Phil-X demo a few vintage ones on Youtube, and at the time, on a huge B-52's kick - I started looking more and more at this as a possible solution to try some "Ricky Wilson-Esque" things out along with the alternate tuned guitars thing I was already latching onto. In the end, I found a shocking jack of all Trades.

The Bass VI is a 30" Scale Six String Bass with a timbre more like a guitar thanks to a trio of Alnico V magnet 6.4K Ohm Fender Jaguar pickups in all three positions. With a skinny fast neck, split shaft tuners, and a Jaguar-like circuit, a Jag-a-holic like me could not resist. Anyting that can lay down some bass tracks, go battle the Rock Lobster, and then go hang around in Korn-ville like a 7-string can with some creativity and extra tightness makes it now my current go-to bass - and with 3 pickups and rather responsive volume and tone controls, it can emulate just about everything else - this bass basically replaced 4 bass guitars in my collection.

Prior to this bass, I used a 1987 B.C. Rich Ironbird NJ, a 1986 Segovia Bass Guitar, a 2009 Fender MIJ Mustang Bass, and a 2008 Epiphone EB-0 bass - out of all those, the Mustang was my favorite but it just did not have the "kick in the ass" of the B.C. Rich or the Segovia, and the EB-0 was just an awful piece of crap that would not stay in tune and was really just a one-trick pony - and it's rare I'll trash a Bass or guitar, but the EB-0 I feel is deserving of it.

The Bass VI can be like a Danelectro longhorn bass in the bridge, a Jazz Bass with both bridge and middle on, does a fairly interesting P-Bass rendition in the middle somewhere between a P-Bass and A Mustang or Musicmaster Bass, and the neck position has all the tonal character I did sort of like in the EB-0, but this one actually stays in tune and is not a one-trick pony due to an overbearing 32K ohm mudbucker in the neck. As a bass, very versitile, I find my Segovia does not get played much anymore because the VI does a tighter version of that sound with careful EQ.

As a baritone, this thing nails that Ricky Wilson "Rock Lobster" tone in the bridge position like a champ. Apply distortion and it can range from being the sonic version of a concrete drill, to being able to roam around in Nu-Metal/Death Metal/Doom & Gloom sludge lands with ease, and enough frets (21) are there to get up in the Guitar range for some decent soloing - and on top of it, it has a decent tremolo bar!

I mostly play lead guitar and I have used this thing on several recordings.since 2014, including Zombie Jihad's "You Will See Demons" and my own Mad-Mike stuff on Soundcloud. It's also going to be playing an expanded role in a future metal project of mine. I've been considering now doing some arrangements using 2 Bass VI's where they interleave between bass and guitar ranges. It's just been quite a catalyst for creativity because it's an instrument that is so undefined on a specific role or pigeonholed by a specific artist, leaving an open door for all sorts of interpretations on how to play it creatively.

A great amp.......with some debugging.......no pun intended.

The Bugera 333XL is a creation of Behringer corporation in the late 2000's to cash in on the desire for decent Tube Amplifiers at an accessible cost. The original lineup consisted mostly of copies of Peavey's most popular models such as the 5150/6505, the JSX (this one, the 333XL), and the XXX (333). These amplifiers were designed to fit into the lower-mid priced price bracket.

These amps started to ship in late 2007 and within 5 or so months, the issues with these amps started to come to light.

I bought my 333XL in this 5 month period in March of 2008, for just shy of $1000 w/ Bugera 4X12 cabinet. The main draw was that the head itself had 3 channels, decent reverb, a noise gate, had amazing tone (especially considering the price), and was exactly what I wanted for cheaper - as I was not ready to fork $3000+ for a Marshall TSL JCM2000 setup.

However, problems became apparent quickly. The main problems with these amps were....

• The high power input transformer that supplies power to the tubes is connected via a nylon molex connector not up to the job of supplying such a voltage for the duration of many gigs and rehearsals. What happened was the Molex connector gets hot from shoving 120 Watts of 120VAC 60 Hz current into a quartet of EL34s (or 6L6's) and a quartet of 12AX7's, eventually reaching the nylon melting point, severing the connector from it's pins, cutting power to all tubes, and creating the problem where you turn on the amp, the tubes don't light up, you get no sound. This was resolved by me desoldering the original pin connector and then soldering lengths of wire down the traces on the other side of the board to make sure the solder could not get hot enough to cut-connection to the tubes.

• The next problem is footswitches, especially now. The FSB104B footswitch does NOT have a modular cable. The cable is a proprietary mini-Din 5 pin connector with a L-shaped key so it only fits the right way. The cable is not up to the task for gigging for over 2 years and can break. Since it's not removable from the footswitch, it the cable is bad, you either have to replace the whole pedal, or go through a specialty electronics shop to buy the proper connector, then buy your own 5-6-wire cable to cobble your own setup. Once I could no longer replace these pedals - as Bugera I spose' expects us all to go throw $500+ down on a new Infineum model of this amp - I took matters into my own hands, and rewired it for D-SUB 9 pin Serial port connectors and use Serial port extension cables - so now I can go 31' away from the amp live with the footswitch, or scale it down for smaller stages, reducing tripping hazards - now THAT is a solution.

• The input jacks can break under frequent use. When I first bought this amp - I was playing 3-5 shows a week with an original rock band and relied on this amplifier to work every night. That meant a LOT of cable installation and removal. Eventually the plastic anchors that hold the connectors to the chassis broke off, and I had to replace them. Ultimatley, my other main tonal Behringer product - a V-Amp Pro I bought in 2004, at 11 years old, blew up, and so I had some OEM replacement parts to cannibalize from that.

Since then, the amp has not been any trouble thankfully. I'm looking at buying up one or two more dead 333XL's to fix up as backups.

That said, the sound it makes makes all this trouble worth it. Some amps just have a "magic" about them, and this amp has some kind of sonic magic to it.

Cleans have very high headroom - I have put this thing on 12 before, and it does NOT break up even with a set of EMG actives pounding the shit out of the preamp. Very Fendery, even with EL34s. Bright top end sparkle. I think the Tone Stack was designed to appeal to those of us who like Fender Twin Reverb-like cleans.

The Crunch channel is classic Marshall. Nice midrange and upper mid spike, with a bit of a lay-back on the lows. With the XL switch engaged it gives a nice wider bass boost to things giving a slight Van-Haleny effect to the down. It can get pretty distorted, most of the time I run this around 5.

The Lead Channel is much like Crunch, but with a lot more saturation. It does have a "slight" fizz to it if you manipulate the tone stack too much with the active EQ. I don't actually use this for a lead channel so much as to push the gain up on my single-coil guitars.

The biggest feature though to me - for leads - is the FX loop - which also works as a volume boost for solos. This is perfect for my style since when I play solos I don't like my tone to change at all, just get about 3 or so db louder so that I can be heard. This takes a load of work off the Soundman, and takes a load of worry off myself because how do you expect your average sound guy at a dive bar to know exactly when your guitar break is if this is the first time he's heard you.

Since addressing these issues, it's become a rather reliable amp and I've not needed a backup for over 2-3 years, including a period of about 2 years where I was gigging 3-5 shows a week again after all repairs. My ex-bandmates Egnater was more trouble than this amp.

I prefer this to a Les Paul or an SG......really unique voice....great for more than just Loverboy songs...

The Hondo Paul Dean series guitars are guitars designed by Canadian rock guitarist Paul Dean (obviously), best known for this work in the band Loverboy.

Paul had a 64' Fender Stratocaster he smashed and rebuilt imitating Pete Townshend back the late sixties/early seventies, and after it's intentional destruction, it was rebuilt and had amazing resonance - that guitar became Paul's favorite, but also became the basis upon which these Hondo Designer Series guitars were derived from from a sonic standpoint.

The Hondo Paul Dean II version of this guitar features a Sen Ash 2 piece, non-bookmatched and specially tuned body with a tapered, unplated, 4-bolt neck joint for easy upper-fret access, a 3 piece maple neck with a maple 21 fret fingerboard, featuring a pair of 1/4" resonance slots routed parallel to both sides of the truss rod, and a 10 degree headstock tilt and straight string path to avoid the need for string trees. It also features a single volume, tone, and 3-way switch setup, ABS plastic haircell textured black "Anti-scratch" pickguard, Leo Quan Badass-style wraparound bridge, and the choice of the base level Hondo 7.4K Ohm ceramic humbuckers, or for $60 more you'd get DiMarzio DP104 Super II Humbucker pickups just like the ones the original Odyssey version came with.

The Hondo Paul Dean II's biggest draw would be the sound of this guitar. It's very unique, very thick and warm like a Gibson, but the Spank and clarity of a Fender, with a hollow upper midrange "yowl" to single notes that gives solos sort of a vocal like quality, almost like a slow-moving Wah Wah pedal. There is a small difference between the stock and upgrade pickups. The stock pickups are a bit thinner sounding due to the lighter wind, more inline with a Fender sound like a Jazzmaster, while the Super II's add more bottom end to the mix but the sharp crystalline highs are retained and there's a small spike in the midrange.

One impressive thing about this guitar though is the neck. If you like fat necks, don't bother, this is probably the skinniest neck of ANY production guitar I've ever played or heard about - only 1" at the nut! And the back profile from fretboard to neck back is very thin as well. While out of the box the fret leveling leaves some to be desired, if you give a Paul Dean a good fret level, it will give back in spades. AFter doing this, the action was lowered to PRS levels - with about 2/8" at the 21st fret.

Despite the thin profile of the neck, and the fact it has a tilt headstock with no volute, it surprisingly is an EXTREMELY Strong neck. Stringing this guitar up with .013's does not even pull the neck enough to need more than 1/8 turn on the truss rod to keep the relief just right. Most of the time it just stays perfectly straight and just barely tightening the truss rod will put it in good territory for .009s. Too loose though and the nut will rattle, so some might not handle light gauges (.010 or less) very well - which is how I Found out Hondo actually DID the "resonance slots" like Paul designed, that rattling nut makes it sound like there's hornets living in your neck, LOL.

I bought mine in 2010 and it's got to be one of the most well built guitars in my collection. I've only set it up twice in the years I've had it and it does not need to settle at all. I've gigged it multiple times and the only thing holding me back from gigging it more often is how bleedingly rare these guitars are (I'm working out plans to build a few copies of this one, with some special updates). It only seems more Paul Dean II's and even the Odyssey versions came out of the woodwork as soon as I started posting a bunch about them on social media and forums in reply to curious guys looking for Paul Dean's guitar tone or looking to figure out what that "Fender Lead III looking thing" was that he was playing on the 2nd and 3rd Loverboy records/tours.

I find also this guitar, with the Super II pickups, does GREAT for metal. With the low action, skinny neck, and good medium output pickups, it really growls, shreds, and sings with the best of them. And the sustain happy string path, paired with the chambering, make this guitar almost like a "poor man's sustainer" at stage volumes.

The only downsides are no whammy (Which could be worked around using the Schaller Les Trem or similar non-destructive to install device), the electronics (pots, jack, switch) are not the best quality, but they are not bad either, and the original hardshell these came with was the same Korean cheap junk Hondo sent out with their Plywood strats. Also, the pickguard does have a tendency to warp under the stress of the pickup springs in some cases, mine had this when it had the original pickups in it.

Otherwise, great guitar, 5 out of 5, highly recommend, assuming you can even find one.

My #1 goto Guitar of over 17 years........

The Fender Jag-Stang in it's stock form is a decent enough guitar, but I play one with EMG pickups in it that I got on my 17th birthday that has been my favorite "go-to" ever since, and she's got the scars to show for it.

In it's stock Format, the Jag-Stang is a quality instrument built from Fujigen Gakki (1995-1997) or Dyna Gakki (1997-2001, 2003-2006) in Japan for Fender Japan. Despite being a "unfinished" design as the second prototype was to go to designer and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain the day he died that fateful day in 1994, it's surprisingly great. It's only real shortcomings only being the bridge pickup which is a bit anemic at 7.4-8.2K ohms on the earlier models (which had a DiMarzio sourced H3 or H8 humbucker) - the later Alder bodied variants featured a Fender Santa Ana humbucker that addressed all these tonal issues. In my case, the previous owner replaced the original pickups with an EMG SA in the neck, and an EMG 81 in the bridge sometime about 1998 per date code on the pickups (my Jag-Stang is a 1995 1st run model with the 60th Anniversary and "Designed by Kurt Cobain" stickers on the back of the headstock, confirmed by body and neck build dates).

The early Jag-Stangs were made of basswood, which tends to absorb extreme highs and mids a bit, making it a much woolier guitar. Playing an alder model gave a more balanced response due to a thicker wood density. This also affects finish durability - my 95' is a literal relic, dents, dings, scratches everywhere, all of them from 17 years of hard gigging and studio work. It does not help that the paint on these, particularly the early ones, was just one giant thick glopping coat of sonic blue or Fiesta Red.

Now to one of my favorite features, the vibrato. The Fender Dynamic Vibrato is one of my favorite units of all time. It's smooth, like a Kahler, but I don't need to drag an entire pile of hex keys with me to tune, or make small adjustments. It's also more economically sound than a Floyd Rose because replacment parts are cheap, and I burn through things like pivot points and knife edges a LOT less as fast as I do on my Floyd Rose guitars. I can whammy all day on this thing and it never goes out of tune.

However, in 17 years, I have made some mods and improvements. The EMG Pickups in this thing sound amazing - TBH, I've only ever played one out of the hundreds of guitars I've played that matched the Jag-Stang with that particular set of pickups, and it was a Fender Prodigy. I added a Pi2 Phase inverter preamp to allow me to still get the out-of-phase sounds the Jag-Stang is somewhat known for having (but minus the volume loss), added tone recovery cap brought to an extreme, giving me more tonal versitiliy, no-load tone control. All of these turned the Jag-Stang from a great "grunge" guitar into a Pensa Suhr terrifying, Tom Anderson scaring tonal chameleon. It makes an EXCELLENT platform for hopped up circuitry once you figure out how those 3-way switches work. Also, my modification improved on the pickup selection on-the-fly because I designated one switch to pickup selection and the other to tonal edits.

17 years of everyday hour or more play on this thing and of course I had to replace some parts. I had to replace the tuners in 2006 because the originals wore plum out from all the tuning changes I do, CGDGBE, Drop-D, whole step down, 1/2 step down, and back again a lot. The Ping sourced Kluson copies are just not up to the task for a lifetime, I ultimately got a set of proper fitting Kluson Revolutions on there and had my split shaft sealed gear cake and eat it too.

Another thing is that Cobain bumped into the perfect combination of size and shape on this by accident (with help of Fender Custom Shop luthier Larry Brooks) - the result is a guitar that looks a little odd at first glance but is extremely comfortable despite not having contours, and the way the shape sits makes it not look stupid on hulky tall guys like me - like I've been told Mustangs tend to do to me.

Basically put, the Jag-Stang is a well balanced (especially the later stock models), fast playing, great sounding guitar with a few quirks that are easily ironed out. Sure some might want to ride the Nirvana legacy to death, but after picking up a pre-modded version, I felt like taking the Jag-Stang into it's own place, which it also can do just as well as any Strat or Telecaster.