Doylestown Gold Exchange & Jewelers has just acquired a vintage Fender Jaguar guitar. This is an incredibly cool instrument. It’s also a rather rare guitar, and a true collector’s showpiece.
The Fender Jaguar was produced for 13 years, beginning in 1962. It introduced a number of sonic features that were designed to lure guitar players away from Gibson, which was one of the company’s main competitors at the time.
The Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson was one of the best-known guitarists who played with a Fender Jaguar during the instrument’s salad days. Indeed, the Jaguar’s earliest burst of popularity came directly from the mid-60s surf rock scene.
In the 1980s, years after Fender had cancelled production of the Jaguar, the guitar experienced an unexpected resurgence of popularity in the punk rock and new wave scenes.
But it wasn’t until the introduction of alternative rock and indie rock in the 1980s and 90s that the Jaguar’s social currency — not to mention the financial value of vintage Jaguar models, like the one we recently acquired — truly began to explode.
To some degree, this was due to the Jaguar’s unusual bridge construction, which allowed the guitar to produce a surprising feedback effect known as “sympathetic resonance”.
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, for instance, has taken advantage of the Jaguar’s curious audible abilities throughout his career to great effect.
The continued popularity of the Jaguar among both professional and amateur musicians eventually led Fender to reissue the classic guitar; the first reissued models hit the market in 1999.
More recently, Fender has produced replica models of the Jaguars played by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, and Johnny Marr of the Smiths.
Feel free to stop by our Doylestown shop if you’d like to see the vintage Jaguar we’re offering for sale. The guitar is a solid body 24-inch scale, and features a floating vibrato unit, a feature that’s sometimes referred to as a “tune-o-matic”.
We’re located in the Cross Keys shopping center at 812 N. Easton Road. And you can always give us a call at 215-345-6630.
