1996 Fender Japan JG-66 Jaguar Electric Guitar

It's hard to argue with a Jaguar! They emit waves of tres cool energy just sitting-around a room. This one's a Fender Japan reissue model from '96 and while it's in overall good shape, it did arrive here with some various issues and has now left for home as a solid, functional player.

The funniest part is that the wiring under the hood was all correct but almost every soldering point of contact was just dead. I had to reflow every connection and then replace a few runs of of extended wire and grounding to get it back to health below decks.

The next problem was a whammy plate (the bit that holds the strings) that would not stay in its rocking-slot and kept moving forward towards the bridge and then down where it would then have the strings jammed into the top plate of the unit. Basically -- it wasn't rocking correctly in its hinged area. I took it all apart, finally, and used my Foredom tool to grind-away a slot for the whammy plate to rock in nice and securely.

After that there was the usual tidying -- Ancel leveled/dressed the frets and added foam riser material to the back of the pickups and I showed him how I "block" the bridge from traveling too much by adding tuner-post ferrules and wraps of aluminum tape to the bridge feet sockets. The neck got shimmed back a bit, too, giving a better break-angle from the whammy over the bridge. Fortunately, the owner likes wound-G strings and so the handling on this guitar is excellent -- it's not loosey-goosey or quirky.

My only gripe is that I didn't have a normal Jag whammy arm hanging-about to hand the owner, so he got a random pop-in, Strat-style one from my parts stash until he can get himself a good arm. It functions the same but because it's not as long, swells are quicker to initiate and the feel is slightly stiffer.