I Heart Guitar

Fender offsets are the ultimate indie guitar. They coax players towards textural, chordal playing, angular melodies, ringing open strings, and often a lot of extra noises, clatters and clangs thanks to that entertainingly unique tremolo system. It seems weird in retrospect that indie guitar icon Johnny Marr wasn’t a Fender Jaguar player until picking one up in Modest Mouse in the 2000s. Now it almost feels strange to see him without a Jaguar. 

Marr’s latest signature model takes the majority of its cues from his existing model, which is among my favourite Fender guitars. The biggest difference, and it’s a huge one, is the addition of a trio of lipstick pickups in place of the Jaguar’s regular two single coils. But let’s back up a bit and break it down. 

We’ll start with the overall features. We’ve got an alder body with a gorgeously deep custom gloss nitrocellulose black laquer finish and a 22-fret maple neck with rosewood fingerboard. The fingerboard radius is 9.5”, a slightly flatter board than you would expect on a Jaguar (where 7.25” is more common). The back of the neck is carved to Marr’s specific preferences, inspired by the neck on his ’65 Jaguar. The 24” Jaguar scale is present and correct, and while the vintage tremolo initially looks pretty standard, there are a number of tweaks to the spec. The vibrato itself is a classic vintage-style floating Jaguar unit but it employs a nylon sleeve insert and a taller tremolo arm, while the bridge uses a Jaguar base with Mustang saddles and speclialised nylon post inserts (and the radius differs from the standard Marr model in order to match the flatter neck of this version). There’s also a removable bridge cover in the same style as the ashtray covers found on Strats, Teles, Jazz Basses etc. Cool touch. 

But what makes this particular Marr model stand out is its electronics setup. First up and most obviously we have those three lipstick pickups. They’re made by Kent Armstrong to Marr’s specs, and represent his continued search for tone and versatility. In addition to the typical master volume and master tone controls, there’s a four-way pickup selector switch to give you bridge, bridge+neck in parallel, neck, and bridge+neck in series modes. 

An extra three-way switch on the top control plate flips between the wiring of the original Marr Jaguar model (complete with muted middle pickup in keeping with said original model’s two-pickup layout); a version of the same but with the middle pickup added to every setting; and a middle-only option that bypasses the four-way switch. There’s also a brightness switch which really takes the low end out of the signal if you need it. Then there’s a secondary brightness switch which only operates on the neck+bridge series mode. Fender and Marr have figured out how to get a huge amount of variety out of this circuit. To me it doesn’t feel too complicated but I’m sure there are players who think there’s too much going on here. 

Sonically, this guitar is supremely versatile. The in-between settings afforded by the middle pickup create a texture that we’re just not hearing from a Jaguar: clearer, snappier, slightly hollow, definitely gritty. Then flip back to the two-pickup mode and you’re locked in to a new take on the classic Jag vibe, edgier and twangier but no less bold and powerful. The tone is almost a little Telecaster-like looser, darker within the middle frequencies, but you can zap that darkess straight to heck with the brightness switch. 

The sheer clarity of this guitar makes it a great choice for players who use loads of pedals: it maintains its character no matter what you’re piling on top of it. And it’s definitely geared towards clean and edge-of-dirt sounds, but I found a few settings that wanted nothing more than to absolutely roar through a fuzz pedal. 

Is this the ultimate Jag? Can it be the ultimate Jag in a world where the regular Marr model exists? I dunno but it’s certainly the most fun Jaguar I’ve played in years and undeniably the most versatile one ever. My only suggestion would be, hey guys, how about a version with a lipstick humbucker in the bridge position? Aww c’mon, it’d be cool. 

The post REVIEW: Fender Johnny Marr Signature Special Jaguar appeared first on I Heart Guitar.

This last year has been, without doubt, the absolute worst of my life. I lost my mum. I lost three other family members. My wife had several hospital visits and an operation. I suffered a bunch of health stuff. Already in treatment for depression and anxiety, the sheer weight of everything I was trying to deal with meant that if I was not at work, I was at home just laying on the sofa staring at the walls. I was bursting into tears at random moments or memories every day. Things got bad. You know the kind of bad I mean. The kind where there were two nights in particular where I almost never came home. 

I’m seeing an amazing therapist now who is really helping me. I feel like I’ve come through the deepest darkest parts of my depression and grief now. A big part of that has been forcing myself to look for the light. Turning off the phone and letting myself get lost in books. Going for long walks and feeding the local birds (I could write a whole article about the birds in the neighbourhood now, the family of magpies who gather around me and sing for peanuts, the spotted dove pair, the crafty Currawongs, the dishevelled little Magpie Lark who flies in circles around my head like I’m in a Loony Toons cartoon and I’ve just been hit in the head with a mallet).

And one of the other things that’s really helped has been setting up a pedalboard in the living room so I can just play with no fuss whenever I feel like it. 

Earlier this year I got a TONEX Pedal by IK Multimedia. I’d already been using TONEX in my recording setup but the depressive funk I’ve been in meant that my computer stuff was no longer all hooked up and my studio space was basically being used as storage. So I brought my monitors out into the living room, popped them either side of the TV an sound bar, plugged in my pedalboard (it stashes nicely out of sight under the TV cabinet) and now I have this little rig that I can immediately hook into when I need it. I have a Line 6 HX One before the TONEX pedal and an Eventide H9 after it, all connected via MIDI into some Hotone controllers so I can do all sorts of fun clever stuff. I spend hours with a guitar in my lap creating presets and fine-tuning tones, downloading tone models and generally just playing guitar for fun again. I love to pop on YouTube or the Retro channel on Aussie streaming service Binge and just play along, no expectations, no pressure, just let my ear take me where it will. 

It’s so healing. 

The one thing that has been able to quiet my mind on my worst days has been that feeling of picking up the guitar and instantly turning into notes. Becoming music. My conscious mind shuts off and I’m just focused on sound and melody. It’s a kind of meditation that takes you outside of yourself in one way and very deep into your subconscious in another. And through it all, I’m starting to regain the urge to write, to get my recording stuff set up again, to play guitar for people, to maybe even put together a band and get out there.

Playing guitar has been a huge part of my healing, alongside the very hard, very intentional work I’m putting in with my therapist to turn these feelings around, and those long walks listeing to music or podcasts or just the sound of nature, and feeding my bird friends which makes me feel engaged in the natural world around me. It’s all important. I don’t know if I would have found my joy in playing guitar again if it wasn’t for that TONEX Pedal sitting on my board (and now I see there’s a TONEX Plug headphone amp unit which is funny cos just last week I posted on Facebook that I wish IK would release one, and while I often have advance knowledge of products due to my work at a guitar store and in the music media, in this case I had no idea). 

Ultimately inspiration is wherever you find it: a new guitar, a new tuning, a new pickup or amp, finding new material to learn. In my case, just having my favourite guitar sounds within easy reach has been really energising, at a time where I needed something to lift me up. I don’t think I’ll ever be over my depression and I’ll never get over all the loss of the past 12 months and especially losing my mum. But I’m trying really hard to remember the good when I’m dragged down by the bad. And playing guitar is really, really good. 

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