#offset guitar

1964 Jaguar in (super rare) Foam Green & 1965 red Mustang in Red, both from the @terry_foster collection.

It's always a bit like drinking from a firehose visiting Terry's collection, and last night's visit was no exception. Terry is cooking up an article on an absolutely unique, one-of-a-kind piece of #Fender history for @fretboardjournal magazine, and asked me to snap a few photos. See Terry's story for some BTS content (you will get a hint of what the article will be about, and even get to see what I look like lol!)

If you don't know Terry Foster, you may have heard of the book he co-authored with Martin & Paul Kelly called "Fender The Golden Age 1946 - 1970", which is essential reading for any vintage guitar afficionado, and the definitive history of the Fender company during it's heyday.

If you *do* know Terry Foster, you will then also know that this photo shows some of the LEAST rare pieces in his vast collection of all things Fender. I can't even begin to describe the depth and breadth of the historical treasures Terry has gathered. He has gone lightyears beyond simply collecting Fender guitars and amps (although he has those too), into Fender ephemera of all types...from production prototypes to dealer signs and chachkas to historical company documents to plans and notes handwritten by company officers to business cards (some spanning specific employees' entire careers with Fender and beyond!) to Fender company Christmas Cards to unseen/unpublished personal photographs of, and taken by, Leo Fender. And this just scratches the surface...the list goes on, and on, AND ON! You have to see what Terry has to believe it, and it will boggle your mind. Hopefully he will write another book someday soon...

This might be the best or worst guitar ever. It might also be the coolest I've ever seen. JazzSGuar? SGjagmaster? JagmaSG?

So. For context my other two main guitars are a squier Jaguar that I use in my band, using AV '62 Jaguar pickups and modded a bit to make it more of a vintage feel, and my Strat which I use for more classic rock tones and other stuff with an HSS setup, using two random single coils again off of ebay and a Seymour Duncan pickup that I added a coil split push pull pot on the guitar for. I dont use the strat outside of my room very often because it has a floyd rose on it, and i can never get it to stay in tune if its not in a climate controlled area that it stays in for a while. yeah. its a pain in the ass.

So. What am I missing if I have these two guitars? well. As much as i love the classic Jazzmaster pickups and have enjoyed every instrument i've laid my hands on with them, I very much do not have a normal humbucker guitar that I just pick up and use as a humbucker guitar. My strat has a humbucker, yes, but like. A strat neck pickup is just. a strat neck pickup. its too sweet not to use when holding that guitar. the bridge pickup on my strat pretty much gets used when im playing punk, otherwise its in single coil mode mixed with the middle pickup.

But im not looking for like, a les paul sound. no. i want funky weird pickups that arent seen everyday. So i went and looked and considered buying random weird pickups before landing on Wide range humbuckers for that kind of hybrid sound of a higher gain humbucking pickup with a little bit of that fender sweetness that i do so greatly appreciate. and yeah i did buy them relatively new but i got a good deal on them and it fucks.

So. I have the body. i have the pickups. now electronics. I got a decoboom pickguard for wide range humbuckers on the way, with a rhythm circuit cutout cause i do want to put something there, but since my jaguar already has a rhythm circuit and makes that lovely warm and lightly muddy sound (positive, i do love putting my voice over that particular tone) I wanna try to do something weird and probably offputting with that section. I have some ideas, thought about making the upper bout switch a bit wider for a three way switch and putting like, an octaver in there with options for a 12 string mode and a bass mode or something. but nothing finalized. ill think of something. otherwise my plans are to pretty much have a normal 3 way wiring with these. I might add coil split switches later or something funky but i also dont just want to rely on those voices for this guitar and think that it will be nice to have a guitar that has a very distinct voice when it comes to my humble collection.

There is the question of the neck. for now im using a neck that i pulled off a squier bullet strat that was found in the scrap pile at a recycling facility (long story) but i do intend to later get a proper dedicated neck for this maybe possibly.

Another thing about this guitar is that I want to not care about its visual condition. let me clarify what that means. I absolutely love and adore guitars that have been beaten to hell and back and abused and the finish is scraped off and stickers are all over them and there are scars and battle wounds and its been bashed apart and fuck i love that shit. but as my partner pointed out to me, I keep my guitars in pretty polished up condition and get upset when i do things to mark them up. which is true. i drilled a hole in my jaguar while installing the mute and ended up going through the guitar. I fixed it the same day, as i went and grabbed some dowels of the right size and glued it up and its functional but i moped about it for a week afterwards. So. I will be trying my damndest to not baby this guitar. I will be trying to make it look like Thurston Moore has beaten it half to death. I will be vandalizing and sticking it and throwing it around and wailing on it and it will hurt for a while but I want my hands and history to be on this guitar and I want it to make a statement of attitude. Will still very much hurt the first time i leave a mark tho.

Anyway, heres a mockup of what i have so far. will be updating as i get some more of its components together.

and here have a more up to date pic of my jaguar as a bonus.