The Fender Jaguar

One of the most unique all time Fender Vintage Guitars is the Fender Jaguar. Some of its design roots can be attributed to the Fender Jazzmaster, but the Jaguar is a matchless instrument. It was released in the ‘60s as Fender’s top-of-the-line guitar. With a 24” maple neck and an aggressive-looking body, the Jaguar is one of Fender’s most stylish guitars to date.

Along with being stylish, this vintage guitar has some features that give it a unique sound, like its single-coil pickups. Like the Jazzmaster, the Jaguar features a floating tremolo arm system. Leo Fender designed this to be different from “synchronized tremolo” system of the Stratocaster. During tremolo use, the Jaguar’s bridge moves along with the strings. This conserves proper intonation and prevents the strings from binding. The 

Fender originally released the Jaguar in 1962. It was popular among surf guitarists throughout the ‘60s. Its ad campaign featured people on beaches in order to make it more appealing to the surf genre. One ad from 1965 shows a man actually riding a surf board while holding a Jaguar. The ad is captioned “You won’t part with yours either.” One ad also featured Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys. Despite this vigorous ad campaign, the guitar didn't do as well as its competitors in its early years, and was discontinued in 1975.

The vintage Jaguar’s popularity started to rise again in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Tom Verlaine of Television is shown playing one on a 1978. The guitar’s unique sound and lack of mainstream popularity made it big among punk and indie rock artists. In the 1990s, the Jaguar became extremely popular again after being used by artists like Black Francis of The Pixies, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.

Fender reissued the Jaguar in 1999 as part of its American Vintage Series. The reissue was an exact replica of the 1962 Jaguar. Since then, variations of the Jaguar have also been released, most of which have humbucker pickups, like the Fender Blacktop and the Jaguar HH. Fender also issued the Jaguar Bass, the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar, and last year, the Kurt Cobain Signature Jaguar. Since the reissue, this vintage guitar has had a major comeback.

The Gibson S-1

In the 1970s the major American guitar companies were losing money due to sales of the competition, whose sales model was to produce quality instruments at drastically lower production costs. Gibson Guitars has proven over the years that they were always willing to change their approach to guitar creation from decade to decade. This is clearly illustrated throughout their history from the 1950s creation of the Flying V and Explorer, to the GibsonFirebird / Thunderbird line of the 1960s, to some interesting instruments in the 1970s that were created with factors new to Gibson such as bolt on necks and newer woods such as maple and alder.

One of these instruments was the 1975 Gibson S-1, which was an effort to create a single coil-pickup guitar that could sound like a Fender at times while also keeping the ability to create a humbucker Gibson sound by combining coils with a “chicken head” four position rotary switch. The Gibson S-1 was shaped like a Gibson Les Paul with a Gibson Flying V peg head.

The Gibson S-1 is often mistaken for the Gibson Marauder, which had on humbucker and one slanted single coil pick up. While the Gibson S-1 was endorsed by Ron Wood, the Marauder was endorsed by Paul Stanley of Kiss. Either one is an easy way to get in the door of Collecting Vintage Guitars, find one at a vintage guitar shop at around $800-$1000.