Fuck it, I’m putting an amp in the living room. Went to Live Music to try out a 1980’s Fender Super Champ 15W job. It was awful. As well as the AIDS scare and the Cold War, the other thing that cast a dark shadow over the 1980’s was Fenders ability to churn out shit amps with an alarming regularity.
Whilst at Live I noticed they had (indeed, still do) a Session ‘Sessionette’ 75W amp there. Session were a British amp manufacturer who made solid state amps that sounded exceptional. They kind of got forgotten about with the fallout over solid states that sounded terrible. They are pretty rare wee amps, but being domestic they do turn up on Gumtree quite a bit.
Anyways, Live wanted 250 bucks for the Sessionette. A good price. But, then I remembered I already had a Session amp. Oh, me! And then I remembered that it was broken.
Last summer, in the throes of what I like to call ‘The Infinite Amp Crisis’ when I was furiously searching for a lightweight amp with huge clean headroom, I found this amp on Gumtree. The dude was somewhere in Fife, and he himself seemed a bit of a ‘rockette’. An older guy, he was just a bit mad. I had to try out the amp in his living room whilst he and his wife (half his age) watched Eastenders.
I took it, mainly because it was excellent but also I really don’t like Eastenders and was keen to get out of there. And it was excellent: a very valve like response, you could get a Twin-like big fat chimey clean sound at the fraction of the volume. It was around the same age as me, and the on board reverb was outstanding. Seriously. I have never heard reverb this good, pedal, valve, plug in, whatever. I can only attribute it to the fact the spring pan is mounted sideways in the amp, and 30+ years of hanging at a funny angle has slackened the springs or something. If you want a good reverb pan, get an old one. That’s where it’s at.
Tons of connection options: external speaker, headphone jack, FX loop. You can also blend the clean and overdrive channels together (same effect as ‘jumping’ a valve amp)
So what do I do after picking up a rare, perfect amp at a knockdown price? Why, fuck it up after 2 weeks of course. I put it on my wee suitcase trolley thing to take to practice. In the middle of a potholed industrial estate. Apparently, if you bash a 30 year old amp around enough it will actually break. I was raving to the guys how this amp would blow them away. I plugged it in and – pow! – horrible, raspy distortion. Anything over 8 o clock on the volume and it just farted. The guys must have though I really had lost it this time.
Got it home, had a look inside: a transistor had been snapped off. Tried to solder it back in place. Totally made a pigs ear of it. So, here is the current ‘repair’ I have done on it:
How did we live before electrical tape?
That’s right – I’ve literally taped the transistor back onto the circuit board. And guess what? It’s still fucked. So, in about 2 hours, I’m going to whisk it over to some amp repair guy in Tollcross and have him just fix it properly which I should have done last year. But this allows a small experiment. The following is how it currently sounds, all fucked up. Once I get it back from the repair shop (and by that I mean the guys house) I’ll do some samples with how it should actually sound.
Guy reckons it will take 3 weeks. That seems excessive, but whatever. Maybe his soldering iron takes a long time to heat up.
Honestly, that reverb is incredible. I wouldn’t lie to you about a thing like that.
This is my red Crafted in Japan (CIJ) Jaguar. This is ‘Number One’, as they say. It’s the longest serving guitar I’ve ever had, and it’s caused me more grief than I care to remember. As with all abusive relationships however, I can’t quit it. And yes, I named it. That’s right, I’m that guy http://i.imgur.com/Sn6PD.jpg. I’ll be buried with this damn thing.
So let’s just get the taboo out of the way: Jaguars are the best electric guitars, ever, period. They combine functionality, style, playability and massive sonic potential. Although not always a perfect marriage, a correctly set up Jag will whip any other guitar into the long grass. If you disagree then you are wrong, a liar and obnoxiously ugly.
In 1962, Leo Fender unveiled the Jaguar as the successor to the Stratocaster. Unfortunately people are morons, and it didn’t take off. It was then discontinued in the 70’s. Luckily for the world, post punk and grunge bands lapped up the guitar due to them being dirt cheap, they were back in the public eye and put into production again in the 90’s. Good times. Leo Fender was dead by then though. Bad times.
Growing up casually listening to surf music and heavily listening to grunge, I was always fascinated by the Jaguar. Strat and Les Paul style guitars were rampant and generic. The weird look of the Jaguar offset body was so alien and cool I would obsessively sit through TV chart shows to see if any bands were on that used them.
I can’t remember when I first actually played one, it was later…maybe 2006, Sound Control? I had probably romanticised the idea of it by that point, but I was utterly enthralled: the low action combined with the short scale neck meant, for the first time ever, I could easily bounce around all over the fretboard. It was liberating and revelatory. I couldn’t afford it though, so left with a Schecter copy of something and a broken heart.
Two years later, I was idly googling ‘Fender Jaguars For Sale’ one afternoon and hit upon a classified in some Welsh local town newspaper. It was a month old, but I figured what the hell, and contacted the guy. He still had it, he was still selling it cheap and – yes – he was prepared to post it to Edinburgh. Deal done. It arrived two days before I was due to play a gig (the penultimate Guarana Drought appearance), so it got a live debut promptly.
And I’ve never really looked back. It has a perfect neck profile, I can still set action to silly low levels and I know exactly how it will react all over the fretboard. It is also my most heavily modded guitar, and before I bore you with the individual details, here it was totally stock with The Jane Austen Experience:
Not bad, but things can always be improved by stuffing other shit into them. Here we go:
PICKUPS – SEYMOUR DUNCAN ANTIQUITY IIs
Wee bag, sticker and everything
Seymour Duncan make some excellent pickups, though most are geared toward high gain / modern sounds. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m usually stuck in the past so opted for a pair of Antiquity IIs. These are vintage voiced pickups, based off 1960s designs. The Antiquity Is are 1950s voiced, which are okaaayyyyy but a little too low powered and snappy sounding for my needs.
Single biggest change you can make to a guitars sound is change pickups. It’s cheap, very easy (well, single coils are) and hugely satisfying once you’ve done the job (ahem). There are a wealth of pickup options available and I would urge everyone to try a pickup swap at least once. Get a shitty Squier and do it on that.
Got the ‘pups’ new off Ebay for an absolute song (like, 40 quid for the pair or something). I got back late after a practice and they had arrived. As I have the patience of a 2 year old I just decided (around 11pm) to pop them in. So off with the strings, pick guard and out came the stock pickups. Biggest flaw with the CIJ Jags are the stock pickups. With both tone and volume maxed they sound hellishly brittle and thin. Anyways, Rosalita was stripped down. I suddenly had a moment of clarity and felt sheer terror. What had I just done to my favourite guitar? Must be how dudes who kill their wives feel.
It’s like invasive surgery
Part of the reason the new pups were so cheap was probably due to them not coming with covers or ‘claws’. These are the metal brackets that Jaguar pickups sit in: part of the design of the guitar was to focus the magnetic field of the pickup using these to allow higher frequency output. Part of the reason this ended up taking me 4 hours to complete was having to solder the pickups to the claws. They are steel, steel doesn’t really grip solder. After an hour or so of attempts to get them to bind I wasn’t really gripping reality.
Eventually they took, so wired up the pups themselves then set them in.
Good tip here: use different coloured marker pens to denote where you’re wiring. Assembled it all back together, slapped some strings on it, held my breath and plugged in. Aside from your childs voice, the greatest sound in the world is the first note you play after changing pickups. It means you haven’t screwed up and you, yes you, are a fucking champ. Especially at 3am when you’ve got work the next day.
I really like these pickups. They have a nice thump to them and can deliver a really ‘tubby’ bass sound. Even with the tone maxed, they don’t even get that trebly. They take dirt pedals well, and – likely due to the bass character – respond excellently to the strangle switch. Which I have only used once, not counting the times I forgot I had it engaged. Hey give me a break here, I’ve got a lot of balls in the air sometimes.
TREMOLO – STAYTREM ARM
The other big problem with stock CIJ is the utterly useless tremolo arm. The Jaguar floating tremolo is wonderful. Delicate, articulate and responsive. It takes a lot of shit sometimes but that’s only cause people haven’t bothered to learn how to set them up properly. They’re too busy locking their Floyd Roses and putting batteries in their active pickups. And masturbating. Then crying.
On the subject of using your good arm, the actual trem is good: I don’t exactly know what type it is, but it is branded with the Fender logo and has the trem lock which implies it’s American stock. The arm however, pops out of the collet all the time. It’s loose, spongy and swings wildly. Just like a…oh, once it actually popped out mid song when I was playing live. I was so frustrated I spun around and hurled it at a wall, narrowly missing a punters head. The trem arm that is, not anything else.
Staytrem do an excellent cheap alternative – 20 quid, 5 minute install time, basically just has a screw in collet system. It also fixes the arm in place making it nice and accessible. This also makes the trem a bit more sensitive, so a little wobble goes a long way. You heard.
Staytrem arm
BRIDGE – MASTERY BRIDGE
The most expensive strip of metal in the world
This is the stupidest guitar purchase I have ever made. It was embarrassingly expensive. Like, don’t tell the wife and take it to your grave kind of expense.
What it is, however, is the ultimate offset guitar bridge. One thing that is constantly bemoaned on the Jaguar is the stock bridge. Now, it allows very fine detail set up and intonation, but any kind of hard playing will pop strings off constantly. I may have a light touch on the fretboard, but I tend to beat the shit out my picking. Some guys swear by the stock bridge, I hate it like your big stupid face.
The Mastery Bridge is made by Jeff Tweedys guitar tech, rolled on the thighs of virgins then instilled with magic presumably. Spendy, but they fix all the problems associated with Jaguar bridges, including ones you didn’t even know you had. To wit:
– Deep grooves to hold strings in place
– Easy intonation
– Locking posts to prevent ‘bridge drop’ (where a bridge comes loose and slides into the guitar body)
– Self lubricating (I’m not even going there) for smooth string travel on the vibrato – less string snaps
– Incredibly low action possible without losing string tension
Here’s the best bit though: it angles the strings at the body in such a way that they resonate better. More resonance means a fuller sound. It’s noticeable, but still ‘sounds’ like a Jag. Not sure if it was by accident or design, but an excellent upgrade.
Still not actually worth the amount I spent on it though.
PICKGUARD
Wahey! This was designed by my wonderfully gifted friend Sarah, then subsequently nicked my me. No magic in how I got it on the pickguard – just ordered it as a large vinyl sticker, cut it to size and slapped in on. Straight up. It’s a bit rough around the sides from my cutting and starting to fade a bit near the top.
But no one notices unless they’re looking extremely closely. And then I’ll be all like “dude, stop checking out my crotch, man”.
Aint’ it sweet!?
Isn’t that some design? I wish she’d get a website done or something. Sarah, if you’re reading this, get a website done or something.
STRINGS n THINGS
Currently using Ernie Ball ‘Not Even Slinky’ 0.12s. Was using DR Pure Blues 0.12s which sound incredible with real pop and snap, but are about as durable as cotton wool. May make the jump to 0.13s. Will likely wuss out.
Installed a treble bleed mod into the tone circuit, but took it out. These things reduce the treble loss you get when you roll back on the volume and prevents mud. However, it also ramps the treble output of the whole guitar. And when you add even more treble to an already super trebly guitar…well, people start to get upset and you begin to wonder about your life.
Extremely easy and dirt cheap mod though. Good diagram over at Seymour Duncans ‘web gaff’
Future work? I may install a capacitor on the tone control to smooth out the treble drop. Can’t remember what that ones called. Dave Wronski swears by it. Also, years of bloozy string bending have screwed the frets so it needs a fret job, which sounds kinky but all it does it remove the dents on the board you filthy minded animals.
Speaking of filthy, it needs a clean. Proper rank. I used to treat her like a lady, honest.
Here are some sound samples, very rushed, of me playing it. Her. Whatever.
experimentsinterror 
