Re-building a Japanese Jaguar

mattthakat

Hey guys, I just finished re-building/ re-painting a Japanese Fender Jaguar. I had a lot of fun doing it, and it was a LOT of work but I'm happy with the result. I started with a 1998 Candy Apple Red stock CIJ Jaguar, sanded it down, painted it Daphne Blue, then re-wired it with cloth wiring, changed out the pots and put in AVRI pickups and you wouldn't believe the difference. I highly recommend that if you have one of these guitars, that you at least change out the cheap wiring and tiny pots that come with them stock. The pickups would be your choice, but realize that unless you have a very early Japanese reissue, the electronics are really really cheap.

Here are the pictures:

Before

Refinished headstock and correct Jaguar decal

finished product

Closeup of the body

Family portrait

The 1965 Jazzmaster on the gold amp was also a rebuild that I did but I used a Warmouth body and I don't recommend using their stuff because all the routes weren't just off, they were WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off! I had to re-route the whole damned thing!!!

Matt tha Kat

CheriPai

Very nice! I love daphne blue, haha.

What effect did new wiring and pots have on the tone? What wires and pots would you recommend?

mattthakat

CheriPai said:
Very nice! I love daphne blue, haha.
What effect did new wiring and pots have on the tone? What wires and pots would you recommend?

The pickups are very responsive and have that nice Jaguar punchy tone now. The pots were switched to 500s and respond really well. There is a really nice warm sound coming from the guitar and the difference was incredible from what it was before. I am a HUGE fan of the Japanese guitars, but the later guitars do have some really cheap electronics.

CheriPai

Yeah, I noticed that my pots were really cheap... Where would you recommend purchasing new ones?

mattthakat

CheriPai said:
Yeah, I noticed that my pots were really cheap... Where would you recommend purchasing new ones?

You can find them online from Fender or I usually use Angela's Instruments: http://angela.com/ . The typical pots for Jaguars is 1 Meg, but I chose to do 500K pots for it to be less trebly. I like more bass in my sound like with my Jazzmaster. The pickups on a Jag are virtually identical to a Stratocaster. But a Strat comes with 250K pots, so the fact that the Jaguar comes with 1M pots makes them super trebly.