Whenever someone reviews a piece of equipment they own, you need to take the review with a salt bagel and coffee. Obviously they are biased because they own it. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t know anything about it – actually, they know more about it than most. Full disclosure, I own a 2007 Squier Jagmaster.
Squier is owned by Fender as most guitarists know, and they make low end “budget guitars” which puts them in my radar. I own a Squier P-bass which I rather like, but I’ve never owned a Squier guitar until now. But I’ve played countless Squiers in music stores and at people’s houses, and I know that every Squier guitar is unique. Some of them are absolute steals, and some of them are horrible. Which one is the Jagmaster? I’d say in between.
The Jagmaster is a concept guitar that combines elements of the Jaguar (24 inch short scale neck) and the Jazzmaster (double humbuckers.) Before I talk about everything I plan on changing, let me tell you why I bought it – it’s fun to play. The short scale neck with 9.5 strat-like radius is fast, fast, FAST. A player can absolutely fly on it, and I love the way it plays and feels. The fretwork on my model is good, and although the guitar is used, it has the feel of not being played much. The body is surprisingly comfortable when sitting, and very balanced when standing. It looks different and funky.
The parts are practically interchangeable with Strat parts – it has a Strat-style vintage tremolo system and uses the same tuners. One thing that some would consider a curse I consider a blessing: it does not sound like a Strat, or like a Telecaster. It sounds like what it is – a cross between a Jazzmaster and a Jaguar. I love the way it looks, I love the way it plays, and I bought it used for a mere $119, which I consider to be a crazy good value. That’s all the good stuff.
Now the bad. Aside from the body and the neck, there’s nothing of value on this guitar. I’m going to replace almost every single part. If I were a 15 year old and this was my first electric, that would be fine. But I’ve been playing guitar for over 30 years, and I have standards that have to be met. Where to begin…
The tuners are cheap. They work but lack any kind of precision. I have some Strat tuners from a MIM Strat that I will be putting on. The nut is dull sounding and eventually I may replace it with a brass nut, but that’s a ton of work, so the dull nut will have to stay for now. The strap buttons will also stay because I don’t gig hardly ever, and if I do I won’t be taking this guy – I’ll take a more versatile guitar. The pickup selector switch will stay – it’s a cheap switch but it works fine and there’s no benefit to upgrading it.
The pickguard will stay ONLY if I decide to stick with 2 humbuckers, which I’m thinking I probably won’t. That’s going to be fun – I will need to find a pickguard that looks like this one that has the exact config of pickups that I want, and since I’m thinking of going with single coils in the neck and middle and humbucker in the bridge, I think I’m going to have a really hard time.
The pickups. Sigh. They say “Designed by Duncan.” That means they used the design of a good pickup company to make a cheap knockoff. I’ve read that these pickups are actually pretty good, but… no, they’re horrible. They sound thin and noisy. I’d never record with these. This guitar was built for speed so I’m going to keep a humbucker in the bridge. I have a few options on my workbench – the best candidate is the humbucker I took out of my PRS SE Custom 24. It’s an inexpensive pickup but it sounds good and it’s very hot.
For the bridge humbucker position, I have a cool plan until I can come up with a new pickguard. I’m going to put my MIM Telecaster bridge pickup in the humbucker cutout, taped to a dummy single coil pickup cover with no pickup. It will look like a humbucker, it will fill the humbucker space, and it will be a hot single coil. Neat.
Onto the bridge. It’s a cheap crappy copy of a vintage Strat trem, which means I will have to replace it but it will be easy to replace. For right now, I’ll be buying graphite saddles to put on the cheap bridge. Eventually I’ll be upgrading the trem in one of my MIM Strats, and then I’ll take the MIM trem system and move it to the Jagmaster (but using the graphite saddles.)
Graphite saddles are great, but there’s a trick to them. They sound pretty dull until you’ve put a few hours in on the guitar, and then they sound good. An alternative idea would be brass saddles – actually, that might be a great idea. I’ll have to think about that.
The only thing left is the pots and output jack. The pots are cheap. The volume pot sounds fine, but the tone pot sounds beyond horrible when engaged, and is nowhere near smooth. I will eventually upgrade both pots. The output jack is fine.
You might be saying “What the hell? I thought this was supposed to be a review.” Yup, it was a review. I reviewed why the guitar is cool, and then why I have to gut it and replace every single part (almost.) This is NOT a slam on the guitar – every guitar in this price range shares the same issues, and my standards are higher than what you get on an entry-level guitar. But in reality, if I could only do one thing, I’d replace the bridge pickup and then this guitar would be fit to record. The pickups are horrid, but the other parts aren’t that bad. If you get one of these and you only have a little money, just upgrade the bridge pickup. Try and get a used Seymour Duncan or Dimarzio, or even a new GFS pickup. Anything is an upgrade.
I am going to post some before and after sound clips here, so please check back.
UPDATE – 2/28/15
Aaand here we are, almost 5 months later. So what did I end up doing? I replaced both pickups and the bridge saddles as well as the two pots. I didn’t replace the tuners yet, and I’m sorry I didn’t. The tuners are just as bad as they were 5 months ago. They are poop. “Why diss matta?” you might ask. It matta because the most important thing you can do to make a guitar sound mo betta is to tune it. You want a tuner with a high ratio – 14:1 or higher. This gives you fine tune control, so you can be far more precise in your tuning.
I put a GFS Alnico II humbucker in the bridge and it sounds perfect. It sounds like what Squier was shooting for to begin with, but fell short of, with the Designed by Good Company pickups. Clean it sounds funky as hell, crunch it sounds kinda old school rock, and overdriven it sounds throaty and has an almost vocal quality. For the neck I stuck in an old ceramic humbucker I had, but it sounds loud and muddy. I’m going to put another GFS in the neck position.
The bridge saddles were replaced with Graph Tech graphite saddles, as per my plan. When you first install these saddles, they make the guitar sound a tad dull, but once they wear in a little things improve. They are not as bright sounding as brass or steel, so if you want the brightest tone possible you shouldn’t choose them. I don’t use them on my Telecaster. Once they’re worn in, I’d say they warm the sound a little bit. But best of all, they don’t have little screws sticking into the bottom of your hand as you mute.
I did not (gasp) replace the trem block. I’ve got the thing blocked, so I’m not sure a new trem block would even matter.
No sound clips posted, even though I promised. But there will be. This guitar is featured on two songs on my upcoming EP “The One Thing.” Once that’s out, I’ll link it here.
There was one other mod I did – I rolled the edges of the neck. I’m planning a video shoot to demonstrate how that is accomplished, and again, I’ll post it here. And I want to write a blog post about it, too. So for now I’ll just say I rolled the edges and the neck is now more comfortable to play.
After living with this guitar for 5 months, I can honestly say it’s now one of my favorites. I don’t know why short scale necks aren’t more popular, because they’re so much fun to play. I guess maybe most other players don’t agree with my assessment? Regardless, if you see one of these guys used for cheap, play it, and if you like it, snag it. They’re kind of rare in a local market, but with some mods they can be great.
