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Fender Jaguar Bass Guitar

 

Review of the Fender Jaguar Bass by The Man in the Jar

This is a really cool retro-styled bass with a modern twist.

Features of the Fender Jaguar Bass 

Tuners - Open-backed tuners with huge gears and the traditional large Fender knobs. These heads work really nicely but watch for a build up of dust and hair in the gears over time. The capstans are traditional slot-style rather than having a hole for the string. These can be a bit of a pain during re-stringing until you get used to them.

Headstock - Familiar Fender scroll headstock with four-on-one-side. A chunky round string guide increases tension over the nut for the first and second string.

Nut - The white plastic nut is a set-in-slot type and is tidily finished. The nut width of 38mm feels quite narrow which for me, a guitar player, makes this bass very comfortable to play. 

Neck - The bolt-on long-scale maple neck is beautifully slim in the hand and the gloss lacquer finish enhances the playability. Access to the upper frets is excellent.

Fretboard - The rosewood fretboard has a lovely stripey grain and the overall look of the instrument is greatly enhanced by the large aged pearloid block position markers. These are supplemented by small white dot position markers on the player's side of the neck.

Frets - The 20 vintage-style frets are not as fat as you might expect on a long-scale neck, but once you get used to the accurate fretting technique required the subtlety of the thinner fret wire simply enhances the playability of the thing.

Action - This bass was beautifully set up straight from the box. The action for each string had been carefully considered and set for best resonance against playability.

Body - The classic Jaguar body is, of course, derived from the Stratocaster. I think the slightly offset outline of the Jag style adds a whole bunch of cool that the standard Fender shapes just don't have. Essentially a slab of alder the Jag Bass body is not much thicker than a Strat. This gives the bass a comfortable strap-weight. Although slightly neck heavy, the Jag gave me no trouble when slung with a leather strap with a rough underside. The back of the body has a small plastic compartment that houses the battery for the active circuits. 

Bridge - Very basic rectangle bridge plate with integral stoptail. The four saddles are fully adjustable for action and intonation and have multiple string grooves which gives you some leeway to customise your string spacing at the bridge end.

Pickups - Two vintage Jazz Bass single coils with two pole pieces per string. One sits just forward of the bridge (difficult to see in the picture because the pickup is in a black housing against the black body), the other sits midway between the bridge and the neck, mounted on the scratchplate.

Controls - There are two sets of controls - one for passive use, one for active use. On the body below the strings you'll find standard rotary Master Volume and Master Tone. Set into a chrome plate in the scratchplate on the lower horn are three on/off sliders. One turns the bridge pickup on and off, another does the same for the "neck" pickup (be aware that this means you can turn both pickups off at the same time and be left with a mute instrument). The third switch puts the selected pickup(s) in and out of series. Move to the other side of the strings on the upper horn and you'll find a chrome plate with one on/off slider and two wheel-style rotary controls. The slider turns the bass from passive to active and the rotaries control Treble and Bass in active mode. 

Scratchplate - The three-ply white-black-white aged effect scratchplate connects all the chrome plates and completes a very handsome visage.   

Strap-buttons - Medium strap buttons sit in the usual places.

Output Jack - Set in the front of the body in the same chrome plate that holds the Volume and Tone control.

Finish - Excellent. This is a Japanese made instrument.

Accessories - None.

 

Sound of the Fender Jaguar Bass

Single-coil pickups, maple neck and alder body will all contribute to shaping the sound of this bass. With the output set to passive and the series set to "out" the airy honkiness of the sigle-coils is apparent. I preferred the woodier tones of the neck pickup to the scooped sound at the bridge. Combing the two pickups gave a well-balanced tone with plenty of punch. Knocking the pickups to in-series added a measure of mid and low-end "grunt" that would be well-suited to plectrum-wielding hard rock or boogie playing.

But the real revelation comes when you switch to active. The increase in the power, depth and breadth of the tones available simply leaps out the speaker at you. The bass seems to come alive under your hands with increased presence and sensitivity. Finger-playing now becomes the order of the day and the responsiveness of the active circuits makes this a sublime pleasure.   

 

Overall Impressions of the Fender Jaguar Bass

This is a very special instrument that deserves the attention of bass players of all genres. The wealth of tones available will pretty much cover any bass-playing scenario you might come across, which of course makes it an attractive proposition for professional or home recorders. I doubt that you'll find a cooler looking bass or an easier playing long-scale neck.

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