Kurt Cobain Fender Jaguar History | Guitars of the Gods

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Imagine your heavily modified guitar is so iconic that the company start selling it as a stock and normal production guitar.

I do own a right handed Kurt Cobain signature fender jaguar and it is one of the best guitars I’ve ever played.I understand why Kurt loved his Jaguar.

A dead giveaway that the Jaguar indeed belonged to Cliff Richards' guitarists is that he drilled a third guitar strap button into the bottom horn of the jaguar (you can see it in the video, his strap is connected to the bottom horn).... If you look at Kurt playing the jaguar, you can still see this strap button on the bottom horn! come on! who else would do that? thats too much of a coincidence.

Funnily enough, Fender reckons it's a 65 model, Kurt has said that it's a 66, although in his journals he mentioned obtaining a 67 Jaguar.

That is the exact guitar minus the neck. How do I know? The tortoise pickguard has the exact same pattern as Kurt's tortoise pickguard (minus the play wear under his left hand). Original tortoise pickguards were made by spinning multiple colors of celluloid in a large vat until the desired outcome was achieved. From there the material was dried and made into thin sheets where it would then be attached to the other layers and cut into pickguards. Being spun with multiple colors in a large vat, no two pickguards would ever be identical. This is 100% the same guitar

That David Spade mural is hilarious.

"I reached out to Courtney Love, and she told me to fuck off" I laughed, I genuinely laughed out loud

My somewhat-educated guess is the neck is an 80s replacement from Fender Japan. They did offer replacement necks but they were different enough from the stock necks that someone couldn't make a convincing copy of an original with them. That could account for the strat headstock shape and more generic logo.

This damn guitar was my holy grail since I was 14 years old. I saw the film Nirvana, Live Tonight, Sold Out and it was the first time I had ever even seen a Fender Jaguar. I would watch that film over and over, watch what Kurt was doing on guitar to try to learn the songs. I could never get over the Jaguar with humbuckers. I played with the idea of maybe getting a Jazzmaster but it just wasn’t right. It had to be humbuckers. I was so stoked when I found out Fender was making replicas of Kurt’s Jaguar. When I finally got the money together to buy one, while I was researching I found out the replicas controls were just like a standard Jaguar, with the whole rhythm and lead circuits thing. I didn’t want that at all. It really pissed on my parade for a minute until I started researching all the other kinds of Jaguar with humbuckers Fender has been putting out. Last year I came across a Fender Classic Players series sunburst Jaguar with a tortoise shell pick guard a coil split humbuckers. Perfect. I was always more of a Gibson guy since I learned how to play on my big brothers mid 60’s ES-175 plucking out Lithium and Say It Ain’t So. So this was my first Fender guitar. The thing is so versatile that it blew all my other guitars out of the water. When you have the pickups set to single coil it gets that classic Strat Jimi Hendrix tone right on the money. Then you can roll them back over to humbuckers and it’s like the strength of the guitar doubles (which is exactly what’s happening electronically) and get all fat and warm sounding. Then it has this switch called a tone cut. On some amps the switch ends up working like an overdrive switch. It ups the tone and gives you crunch. This guitar was the only thing in my life that lived up to all my expectations and more. The only other guitar I play now other than the Jaguar is my Epiphone Wilshire for when I want something light weight. I put the Telecaster knobs on it, and I’m going to put the three-way switch in eventually.

If it's ever sold, I wonder if it makes more than the unplugged acoustic

That mural on the wall looks like David Spade.

Enjoy this video about Kurt Cobain's Fender Jaguar. It's got an interesting history.

Im guessing that Kurt bought it with that neck. Marty the possible original owner may have replaced the neck due to some damage to it, like needing a refret, and instead of repairing it, it got a new neck at a cheaper rate since maybe the block inlays were added to the cost, as well as the larger headstock. Or...its a boogie neck, now warmoth

A few things to note here; Kurt’s Jaguar did NOT have a Stratocaster headstock, this is a common misconception. The Fender signature model is not an accurate representation of Kurt’s actual 1966 Jaguar. Martin was known for heavily modifying his guitars to suit his preferences. I have a friend who spoke with a luthier Martin worked with. The neck we see on Kurt’s was hand built for Martin to be a very thin, bound neck with dot inlays and a smaller than CBS headstock with a custom spaghetti logo (the actual size/specs are completely custom but it’s pretty close to a Jazzmaster headstock and the neck has a flat, Gibson style radius). This neck can be seen on Martins Jag in 1981. The bridge seen on Kurt’s jag was a tone pros rather than Gotoh, it was black with brass saddles. The tuners were changed sometime in early 92’ from the vintage style to modern Gotoh’s.

I own the new stock version, it was a floor model, it’s got some damage and I got it for a lot cheaper so I’m not complaining, great guitar, so versatile and sounds amazing.

This is great production. Learned a lot. I always wondered where that headstock decal and shape came from. So unusual. So cool.

Cliff toured the U.S in '82 and the Ryder truck with all the backline keys, and guitars was stolen. Amongst the guitars were Cliff's 1958 Martin D-28, '60 Gibson J-45, '62 GIBSON J-200. Other guitars lost were an Ovation Glen Campbell 6 string, a 1957 Gibson 3pu black beauty and Mart Jenner's guitars which would have been a L.H. Dick Knight SG, and a LH Fender Jaguar in an Anvil flight case. Cliff would like his D-28 back and Terry Britten would like his Black beauty back.

Regarding the neck of the Jaguar, know this is possibly a little off topic, but relevant: Martin Jenner was seen to play the then "Jenner Jag" with a block inlay neck that was likely not the neck Fender put on to the guitar in 1965/66. The factory neck would probably have been a dot inlay bound one as you say in the video. The neck that was on the guitar when Kurt bought it off of Jenner or his estate in April-May 1991 was a dot inlay bound neck with a Stratocaster-ish headstock. That "Jenner/Cobain neck" is a custom, non-Fender, extra skinny C-neck made by a luthier for Jenner. Hence incorrect decal that has been lacquered over. Apparently both Jenner and Cobain enjoyed very thin guitar necks, despite, at least Kurt, having quite long fingers. Anyway, the luthier that made the Jenner/Cobain neck has been found, by an individual building his own "reverse engineered Jag-Stang prototype" (Amon/Acrylic Superman) while researching for his project. However, Jenner's luthier is now really old and does not want public attention. The luthier did however share the design drawings for the "Jenner neck" that Cobain bought, but the drawing came with the caveat that it should not be published further while he is still alive. (This was in 2018/2019 I believe). The neck on Kurt's/Jenner's original Jaguar was said to be thinner than a Fender factory Jaguar neck from the 60s but the exact specs remain unknown. The neck Fender put on the commercially available "KC Jaguar" is not identical to Kurt's/Jenner's original Jaguar with respect to dimensions. It is thicker than a standard 1966 Jaguar neck. I own both a stock 1966 Sunburst Jaguar with dots and binding, and a KC one and I just measured the stock 66 one to be 2mm THINNER than the KC one at the 2nd fret.... Kurt loved his Jaguar for its thin (custom) neck and some evidence points towards this Jaguar neck being the one that was sent to Fender for them to use as template to make the Jag-Stang prototype necks in 1993, which could explain why the Jaguar was not used/seen around that time, in addition to it likely having a broken humbucker/electrical issues after Kurt squashed a cantaloupe melon on it onstage in Rio in early '93. Kurt's original hand-written notes submitted to Fender along with his cut-and-paste drawings even mention "small headstock" and "very thin neck". (His beloved 69 Competition mustang was not sent away as it was to be used in the In Utero recordings soon after that). Larry Brooks, custom luthier at Fender, was supposed to make the neck for the first prototype Jag-Stang using the neck Kurt sent but due to some kind of Fender corporate foul-up, or the fact that the neck that Kurt sent them was not an actual Fender neck, another luthier, at Fender Japan, Scott Zimmerman, built the neck using a 69 Competition Mustang neck (not Kurt's blue Competition one) as template, and Kurt's first prototype Jag-Stang ended up with something closer to a Mustang neck, with an oversized headstock not in accordance with the "specifications" Kurt had submitted, as is the case with the series manufactured ones. I believe Kurt returned the guitar with instructions to improve the neck, at least his Guitar tech Earnie Bailey did extensive modifications to it after it was received. Fender did not use to save any records of the custom shop work being done around that time so the exact traceability of what neck was used, how it was made and the dimensions that it would have had, is not available from them. REM's Peter Buck currently owns Kurt's Jag-Stang but it has not been seen for years. The second Jag-Stang prototype that was not sent to Kurt due to his passing has been auctioned off into private hands. In conclusion, all of Fender's "KC" models, (Jag, Jag-Stang, and probably more) have necks that are not correct to the actual ones played by Kurt.

Love how in depth you got into the Jaguar's history and differences between a stock one and Kurt's Jaguar. (California)