Fender Jaguar Blacktop

This is one of two guitars I bought at Best Buy when they were closing out their music department.  I've seen this Fender Blacktop Jaguar with 2 humbucker pickups at the Duarte store hanging up on the wall (about 10 feet above ground) for the past couple years.  I didn't even bother trying to play it because the $499 tag was just a lot more than what I was willing to pay for an HH Jaguar.  Until last week, when I visited the store three times to look at what deals were available.  I ended up paying half the street price which is easily still a hundred below typical asking prices on Craigslist.

This is also my first black guitar and it was definitely a challenge photographing it as dust, smudges and fingerprints show up really nice.  The HH combination almost makes it sound non-Fender like.  Perfect for long solos or overdriven power chords, this Jag has everything but twang -- which is just fine.  I have a whole wall of twangy axes if that's what I wanted.

The shorter 24-inch scale makes chord transitions in the first five fret super fast.  The downside is solos at 15 and above are not as clean because of the closer fretwires.  The other feature I like about this is the fixed bridge -- not a big tremolo fan so this suits me just fine.  The guitar came setup with 9 and it feels a bit light given the shorter scale as well.  I'll leave it with the factory strings until I decided to change them -- at which, I will try the next higher gauge.

The guitar is made in Mexico but has all the quality features of Japanese Jags.  I played it 2 hours the first night I took it home and the light strings and lighter weight body effectively eliminated any fatique from playing the instrument.  Overall, the guitar is definitely worth the price I paid for it.