Few players out there are doing as much promo work for the Fender Jaguar as Johnny Marr, who has embraced the 24-inch scale model as his muse. His signature model reflects the mods of a true Jag aficionado, and now his new limited edition Fever Dream finish ups the visual ante too.
It's named after Marr's latest solo album, Fever Dream Pts 1-4 and he's been using one for a year. It now joins the existing Olympic White and Metallic KO options but will be strictly limited, like the Black, Lake Placid Blue and Sherwood Green options before it.
Like those existing signature guitars, the Fever Dream Jag features an alder body, custom-profile maple neck based on Marr's own '65 Jag. And a 7.25” radius rosewood fingerboard like that guitar, with 22 vintage-style frets. Marr took the vintage-correct neck experience all the way with the truss rod too – you'll need to take the neck off at least partly to make adjustments at it's at the base of the neck.
But the traditional 'idiosyncratic' (read: frustratingly inconsistent) Jag bridge is addressed here; it uses the traditional 'fix' of Mustang saddles and nylon post inserts. The traditional floating tremolo is also tweaked with a a taller tremolo arm and a nylon sleeve insert to keep it from interfering with your playing while not in use.
Pickups are two custom-wound Bare Knuckle signature single-coil pickups (based on the Cornish company's Yardbird design) with a modded four-position blade selector further widening the horizons by giving players parallel or series options.
“What I was looking for from my Jag – which I wanted to bring from my Telecaster world – was from Joe Strummer," Marr told MusicRadar earlier this year about the initial tonal inspiration, "and I think that he had something going on in the Clash records which wasn’t about rockabilly or that classic kind of piercing, very present, clean, focused sound; it was that clang. That was what I wanted from the Yardbird pickup that Tim was doing at Bare Knuckle, that went into my early 2000s custom ‘60s reissue.”
The Fender Limited Edition Artist Johnny Marr Jaguar in Fever Dream is £2,449 / $2,299. More info at Fender.
