Servicemen Guitars from the 1960's: August 2009

From fenderjaguar.net,

"These Filipino made Jaguar fakes are often referred to as "Vietnam serviceman guitars". They were made sometime in the 60's and may have ended up in the hands of US soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Funnily enough, there is a picture of Mick Jagger playing a black one on the cover of the Rolling Stones compilation album entitled "Rarities 1971-2003".

By some accounts, the quality of some of these guitars can be absolutely shocking. However, many people have started collecting them for the novelty and low price compared to a real Jaguar. There are also wild differences in spec, quality and build all round. Perhaps the reasons for this may involve some sort of "cottage industry".

I have seen them in sunburst and olympic white. And also, candy apple red, ocean turquoise and black, with matching headstock. On some models, the neck is affixed in a rather strange way. Instead of the screws being countersunk into the neck plate, they just go through the body. And the 'neck plate' then acts as a cover for the screws which are behind it. The Fender logo is stamped on the tremolo and there is a Fender decal on the headstock. Both of which seem to look very amateurish. The tuners have exposed gears. The dots are larger than a normal Jaguar. The heel of the neck looks more rounded and the neck appears not to be as wide at the heel. The slide switch on the tremolo is non functional. Some of the bridges have a single saddle. The pickguard screw to the upper left of the neck pickup is absent, which is perhaps the best way to tell if a Jaguar is a serviceman at first glance (see pictures to the right. Filipino on the left, real Fender Jaguar on the right). They came with a plywood type of case, sometimes with a red lining

Mike Ball also writes in to tell us this:

"I work at Guitarville in Seattle, WA and I recently had the good fortune of getting to examine one of the fake Filipino Jag's up close. The one I saw was Lake Placid Blue with an unbound neck and matching headstock, and was practically mint with the original case, mute, trem bar etc. Other than the color, this one differed from the ones described on your site by having a hand painted Fender logo instead of a decal! Also, the one pictured on your site has the hole for the mute slug underneath the bridge like on a real Jaguar. However, the fake one that I saw did not have a hole underneath the bridge, but on the treble side of the bridge between the bridge and pickup. Another significant difference is that all of the chrome control plates were very thin and placed on top of a pickguard that covered roughly the same area as a Jazzmaster guard. Lastly, the neck plate on the fake Jag was mounted like a regular Fender, not in the bizarre fashion that your site describes. Whew! Well, I hope that this made some sense and was relatively interesting. I guess it just goes to show that there were a few different places churning these fake Jag's out back in the 60's."

Source

http://www.fenderjaguar.net/