Sonic Blue color
Serial # is U 036224
Has the "Designed by..." and "50th anniversary" stickers... what year was the damned Fender 50th anniversary? Seemed like it was at least three years... I thought the Broadcasters came out in '48...
I've got my neck off my J-Stang at the moment, and it looks the mostly same as Robert (original)'s as he's posted above: it's got that strange JT - 95 stamped across the back of the neck (and an 'N' stamped in the lower left corner). However, there is no month date stamped on the heel/butt of the neck -- mine instead is located inside the neck pocket. What's the JT-95 stand for?
It reads - EX95. Any idea what this means? I'd really like to know the month the guitar was made. I can post pics if anyone wants to see, but I've got my guitar apart as I am upgrading/repairing it.
Story behind my Jag-Stang:
I am the second owner--I originally bought it secondhand in late 1996 for $350, including an M-80 solid-state 12" amp. There is no tremelo bar, so I don't know if it fits Strat-issue whammy bars... anyhow. The guy later on went to sell a lot of his stuff before he moved out of state. I wish I'd known more about guitars and amps back then--the J-Stang was my third guitar, following a turd Lotus Strat copy and an adequate but overpriced Bently Tele copy that I paid more for than the Jag-Stang!!! But this cat had a Fender Prosonic in his bedroom a Vox AC-30 in his quonset. I hope he didn't sell off everything.
He seemed generally disappointed with the JS model, and had a Jazzmaster he used frequently. His one complaint was the guitar was an ineffectual re-hash of the Duo-Sonic he already had (but I sadly never got to see).
The guitar isn't the perfect design, I'll give it that, but I think the guy knew I wanted one of these and he knew I couldn't afford to buy one at the time. He did me a solid, but on top of the cash I traded him up a Harmony H-15 BobKat (two DeArmond pups). It had a stamp date of February '66 under the scratchplate. I may be one of those losers who just laments parting with ANY guitar (barring one ####e-ish Lotus), but I miss that little 23" scale Harmony. Immediately after he got it he started sanding down the neck because of the baseball bat neck, but to reflect on that makes me want to cry.
After I had the guitar for a short time I did the early "stock upgrades" ("neutering" the Floating Tremelo and having a Duncan JB installed). Only after many years did I realize what a moron I was, because the JB is not F-Spaced, so the poles don't align with the strings. I'm going to rectify this soon.
Sometime around '99 or so, I got in a rage after being told to stop playing because of the noise at my residence, so I pulled off my J-S and threw it face down as hard as I could into the cement floor and stomped on the back. I've regretted that ever since, but radiotherapy and chemo usually include steroids to build up the immune system, and being such a small, weak guy with a temper, the 'roids only made my fits worse. I was ashamed of the damage I did to the guitar, but after all this time, taking it apart, I'm more surprised that I didn't do MORE damage to it--it's not in bad shape at all. True, the basswood attracts body dings like a battered stepdaughter, but the hardware damage I did can be repaired or replaced.
All these years I thought it was a '96, because of the time first owner purchased, but serial dating and the neck seem to point that it was an early model of the second batch. If 'T' is early 1995, my 'U' model is from later that year. The numbers following the 'U' are higher than those posted on the board, but I don't neccessarily assume those are production numbers.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not a '96... I purchased a Squier Affinity Telecaster in May 1999. Serial # loosely dates it to early that year, but when I took the neck off, the body stamp claims to be made in February of 1999, and the neck is dated DECEMBER 1999. How is that even possible? I realize the factories probably weren't the same, and the Affinity series is the cheapest you can buy (I love Teles, so when I wanted one to upgrade I went with the cheapest model available instead of tinkering with my American Deluxe Tele). Something is afoot in the factory process, to say the least.
Anyhow, I'm going to believe this is from late '95. This may sound like a silly thing, but 1996 was a rotten year in music and my life. 1995 and 1997 were much better.
I find myself somewhat reluctant to work more on my Jag-Stang, since it seems like several people left their originals stock and bought a re-issue to upgrade and repaint and whatnot... but I don't want to pay $700 or such for a re-issue of a guitar I already have. I'm a poor person.
Anyway, if these 'T' serial models were rolling out in early '95 (there weren't on shelves in '94), then they had to have started producing them in 1994 to get them out in the next year... Fender wasted NO time at all cashing in on the guitar's name-sake generator. Pitiful that they rushed it, because they could have done more, both in production and and quality of the stock setup. I guess one could say the creator's vision was interrupted by his death, but it didn't stop Fender from wheeling and dealing with what little they had. Some stones bleed like geysers, I reckon.
The guitar is more Mustang than Jaguar. I really wonder what could have been of the Jag-Stang had he lived to see this endeavour out, because the Vista Series of the mid 1990s introduced the Jag-Master, which is something I would envisioning K.C. playing. Yeah, it's a cheap, over-simplified Jaguar with humbuckers and the 24" scale (I remember when I first saw one -- Jawbox playing it on 120 minutes and in their "Cornflake Girl" music video), but I think it's something he would have enjoyed, at least for a while. He was pretty fickle about his gear.
And one could venture that without the Jag-Stang, there wouldn't have been anymore "hybrids", something Fender now specializes in. Okay, I can see the limited utility in making the Jag-Master, since it offers a variance, but offering a 1950s style Stratocaster with 1960s hardware and charging people $1200??? That's insane.
But so is price-gouging and limiting sales of guitars like the Jag-Stangs, not to mention forgeries and other schemes by people who sell the Jag-Stangs. The Jag-Master is cheap and accessible... K.C. may not have been keen on endorsing any line of guitars, but getting nice looking, weird retro gear into the hands of young players would have been an aspiration of his.
Of course, I've seen Gavin Rossdale play a JagMaster. That's an anti-endorsement. I'd rather see Tom Sizemore endorsing crystal meth on the Oxygen Network than see Rossdale touch a guitar... ever... again...
