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Lot Essay
Johnny Marr’s relationship with the Fender Jaguar began some twenty years ago when Marr was invited to join American indie rock band Modest Mouse by frontman Isaac Brock in August 2005. It was on their first night jamming together in Portland, Oregon, that Marr had what he describes as a life-changing moment when he picked up Brock’s 1965 Jaguar. Myself and Isaac Brock were playing at deafeningly high volumes at 1:00 a.m. in Portland and my Telecaster wasn't doing what I needed at that moment, Marr told Steve Rosen for Ultimate Guitar in 2012. I cast my eye around and saw this beat up black '63 [sic] Jag that was stashed in the corner and just pulled it out of the rack and plugged it in and we wrote the song “Dashboard’ for Modest Mouse and that was the start of the [Jaguar] journey. In conversation with author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr recalled: Within a moment of playing that Jaguar, I'd recognized that something big was going on for me and it wasn't just happenstance… It was like, where have you been all my life? That moment kicked off a new phase in my life. In his 2016 autobiography Set The Boy Free, Marr explained: I had found a guitar that not only suited me perfectly but did the job of several guitars, and which was also taking me into new territory, in much the same way as the Rickenbacker had done in The Smiths.
Marr became obsessed with Jaguars and Jazzmasters, buying up numerous vintage examples in addition to the precious 1965 model he had procured from Brock, and using them almost exclusively for the next three years as he toured and recorded with Modest Mouse. It was while recording the band’s 2007 album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank that Marr first had the idea to build his own Jaguar and wasted no time in enlisting legendary British luthier Bill Puplett, his go-to guitar sage and technician of more than twenty years, to help with the project. A couple of my friends had guitars that didn't come off the conveyor belt at the airport, Marr told Total Guitar’s Henry Yates in 2010. I realised I'd be heartbroken if these guitars went missing. So, I got the idea of working with Bill on a Jaguar that was mainly an off-the-peg guitar, that would work after Bill had set it up. But I was sorely, sorely mistaken because we'd say, well, what about the pickups, the switches, the pots... not to mention the big mission – the bridge! Playing arenas across the US up to five nights a week, Marr was in the perfect position to road test over a dozen vintage Jags over the course of the band’s epic 20-month tour, working out what he did and didn’t like about each guitar and feeding his suggestions and frustrations back to Puplett at his north-west London workshop. At some point during the tour, Fender got wind of the project and offered to develop it as a signature guitar. What we agreed was that I would make this guitar – with a fair amount of obsessive-compulsive disorder – and then deliver it to them as my perfect Jag, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. They said, “Great, you do that, and we’ll just make it.”
PROTOTYPE #1
With Fender on board to provide parts as required, Puplett’s first working prototype made it into Marr’s hands around the time that he returned to Manchester and began working with UK indie rock group The Cribs after the mammoth Modest Mouse tour drew to a close in July 2008. Having become friendly with the band’s bassist Gary Jarman in Portland, Marr had begun playing casually with The Cribs in early 2008 with the intention of writing a few songs together for an EP. The four-day EP session would morph into Marr co-writing The Cribs’ fourth album Ignore The Ignorant and lead to a three-year stint in the band. It was during their performance at Leeds Festival on 22 August 2008 that Marr was introduced as a member of the band for the first time and first seen on stage with a working prototype. At this point, many of Marr’s suggested modifications had already been implemented by Puplett and would be refined further over the next two years of extensive use on stage and in the studio with The Cribs. It’s a hybrid of all the good bits of my old Jags, Marr told Yates. The really important thing is that I love the Jag as it was, and I think it's perfection, which is kind of an interesting place to start. In spite of that, there are a number of unwanted conditions that don't cut it night after night. For instance, the individual pickup on/off switches: if ever there was an unwanted condition on an electric guitar, it's being able to switch it off! … I want to beat the naysayers, Marr admits. A few of my mates run a mile as soon as they see [a Jaguar]. I almost feel a duty to correct as much as I can without changing what I love about it.
BODY AND NECK
The starting point for the development of Marr’s perfect Jag was Fender's American Vintage '62 Jaguar body, which Marr and Puplett reshaped with a more generous cutaway and forearm contour to sit more comfortably against the player’s body. The longer rear scoop was copied from Marr’s 1963 Lake Placid Blue Jaguar, while the front chamfer was copied from a 1954 Strat. You know how it gets very thin on that bass-side edge – we've gone in that direction, but not quite that thin, Puplett told Guitarist’s Dave Burrluck in 2012. Marr was mindful that the neck profile should suit not only him, but a wider spectrum of players, including those who might have traditionally found the Jaguar neck too skinny. After trying numerous vintage neck profiles, Marr kept coming back to a fuller 1965 neck that he'd been given by a friend who had heard of his growing reputation as a “Jag freak”. It’s slightly more substantial than the regular ’62 or ’63 neck, which I think is going to please people who don’t get on with the small necks on the Jags, Marr told Yates. Speaking to Guitarist in 2012, Marr recounts: By this time, we had a working prototype guitar, with a '62 reissue body. I usually play 63 necks and that was the first time l made this conscious shift to the idea of the guitar evolving from less than an entirely authentic ‘63 or ‘62 Jag. Evidently, Marr settled on this 1965 neck reasonably early in the development process as it was seen with the first prototype body from August 2008 onwards. By 2009, the headstock would display a tiny shamrock and 'J' for 'Johnny' sticker. This favoured 1965 neck would ultimately be transferred onto the second Puplett prototype (the present lot) in around July 2010 when it would supersede the first.
BRIDGE AND TREMOLO
An early modification, which Marr had successfully made to several of his vintage Jags, was to replace the original threaded saddles with heavier Mustang bridge saddles to stop the strings slipping out. Puplett then sought the expertise of engineer John Moore to assist with a redesign of the notoriously problematic Jaguar bridge, which would often self-adjust with heavy tremolo use, reducing string height over time. One of the great things about the Jag is the sound and the tremolo unit, Marr told Guitar & Bass Magazine’s Hayden Hewitt in 2012, but all the vibration makes the screws actually turn themselves round. I went through all the old wives’ tales. I put Locktite on, but the vibrations were so strong that the screws still turned round. I even tried nail polish, all of that. Then I'd get to a soundcheck after a dozen shows, try my pedals and say “what's that sound?” It was like digital distortion, and it was always because the bridge had dropped down. Puplett explains: This is to do with using a Jaguar with light strings, not the heavier gauge it was designed for. You didn't get the same problem back then because the bridge was under much more pressure, he told Burrluck. But with lighter strings, these height adjustment screws start to work loose. They vibrate. So after a little experimentation we ended with John Moore's design, which adds nylon inserts. The legs of the bridge are changed and it's got beefier screws so there's more mass, and the inserts make it almost impossible for the screws to work loose. But it still gives the same rocking motion on the vibrato, as is on the original. Another John Moore design eliminated any play in the tremolo with a nylon bushing to hold the bar firmly in place. It's still a push-fit, Puplett told Burrluck, but it's gripping all of the end of the arm, not just the bottom, so the vibrato action is a lot more responsive, there's tension for the swing but no play at all. It's actually now more Bigsby-like and with good pitch return. Speaking to Hewitt in 2012, Marr adds: As soon as you touch it, it responds, and it also doesn't move around because we added a plastic sleeve inside. You think you'd come up with that in seconds, but no, it took 18 months. We tried all sorts of screws and bolts and all manner of locking systems on there, and it was only by going through all these 'almost right' systems we eventually came up with the solution of having the arm fitted into the bushing.
SWITCHING AND PICKUPS
One of the most critical mods for Marr was simplifying the guitar’s switching system. Normally on an old Jag you have three switches [on the upper treble bout], he told Hewitt. Two of them switch the pickups on, and one is a high-pass filter. Now, crucially, those two also switch the pickups off, so when you're playing in a band like The Cribs and there's a lot of rhythm playing going on and the other guitarist is leaning on you… it means the guitar can just switch off. To elucidate, Marr told us: In the late 50s and particularly the early 60s, a lot of the radio bands that would play with orchestras were in studios that were built near power lines. So, if you were sat there on a live broadcast with an orchestra and you weren’t going to come in on your Jaguar or your Gretsch until bar 124, you didn’t want your guitar buzzing, so you switched the pickups off because there weren’t mute pedals. But for an indie rock guitar player in 2025 or, indeed, a grunge guitar player in 1993, you end up having to put duct tape over those annoying switches, because when you’re grunging out, it’s so easy to switch the guitar off. So that was one of the very first things that I changed. When first seen on stage in August 2008, the first prototype still bore its stock three switch lead circuit controls, but it wasn’t long before Puplett suggested replacing the former with a single four-way Telecaster style switchblade, allowing the player to select either the bridge pickup, both pickups in parallel, the neck pickup, or both pickups in series, the latter acting like a giant humbucker, with a darker tone than usually heard from a Jaguar. I’m often changing pickup position in the middle of songs, Marr told Yates, and [previously] you’d actually have to do two actions to switch one pickup off and the other one on. So I’ve got a four-way Telecaster switch, and what the extra fourth position does is give me the opportunity to put both pickups in series.
I was working on [the signature model] every day and I would have a prototype we thought was right, Marr told Hewitt. I used [the first prototype] on the Inception soundtrack [in early 2010], when normally the situation would call for an SG sound or a 335 sound, and I would pull out my white Jag and you could see the engineer thinking “That guitar is not going to do the job,” and I [would think] “Hang on a minute!” [To combat such prior assumptions], I decided we need this to have a series position and a humbucking position... A little bit of me wanted to take on board criticisms of the guitar from naysayers and see if l could fix them – like people assuming [Jaguars] are too bright. The pickups are darker sounding, but still a Jag. Not wanting to lose the hi-pass filter, Marr and Puplett ditched the arcane rhythm circuit instead and relocated the hi-pass filter to the upper bass bout where the rhythm/lead circuit selector was previously located. The fourth position being an “in series” position meant that I no longer had the hi-pass filter down here, and I use the hi-pass filter a lot, Marr explains in Fender’s introductory video for the Johnny Marr signature Jaguar in 2012. I think it's one of the best things about the Jaguar. So, the regular old tone switch, the circuit switch, now becomes a hi-pass filter.
Bare Knuckle Pickups founder Tim Mills custom wound the pickups to replicate those found on Marr’s 1962 Jag. Out of the four or five Jaguars that I own I've got a '62 Jaguar that has a killer dark sound, Marr told Burrluck. There's never any problem with Jags being bright, and it wasn't that these were duller, but they are darker, almost like it had spring reverb on it – like a garage-rock sound, more middly, darker low-mids. It took several attempts to achieve the exact sound Marr was searching for. We got the bridge pickup sounding right after about five goes, Puplett recalled. Tim was winding them exactly like the originals, just varying the winding. We had a lot more trouble with the neck pickup... I think we had about eight or nine sets before we found a balance between the bridge and neck.
PROTOTYPE #2
Marr continued to use and test the first prototype extensively until mid-2010, when further modifications were made to the switching and pickups on a second prototype body built from a 2008 American Vintage '62 Jaguar (the present lot). This second prototype body was similarly contoured, refinished and customised by Bill Puplett to reproduce all of the modifications that had been made successfully on the first, before further refinements were made. The original Jaguar pickups are opposite polarity, north and south, Puplett told Burrluck, but we found that when you put opposite polarity pickups in series, it sounds too woolly. If you put them both in the same polarity, and this is something we went over with Tim Mills, the series sound is a lot more usable. So that's what we went with. Marr elaborates in the Fender introductory video: It changes the sound quite a lot. Normally on guitars, for noise reduction… the polarities of both pickups go in a different direction. We figured that for my guitar we should do it the same as was on a Telecaster, which is that the polarity of the magnets go in the same direction. And in effect, what that does, is it means that the string isn't being pulled in two different directions, and it actually makes the guitar sound more focused, and clearer, even acoustically.
Switching the pickups to the same polarity, however, created a new problem, Puplett explained: the series sound was [now] too over the top for Johnny, too much bottom-end. So that's when we added the second hi-pass filter. On the first prototype, the redundant volume and tone wheels of the Jag’s old rhythm circuit had been retained on the guitar for aesthetic purposes. Thanks to Cribs’ drummer Ross Jarman, who questioned why anyone would buy an instrument with a knob that didn’t do anything, the two wheels were discarded in favour of a single switch for the second hi-pass filter. I wanted to keep the aesthetic the same as the [original] guitar that I loved, Marr explains in the Fender promo, but get rid of some of the things that I didn’t need and therefore feel like most modern guitar players don't need… I wanted to keep [the chrome control plate on the upper horn] but get rid of the tone circuit… [and yet] still have that kind of two switch thing like the old Jag. And a solution presented itself after a lot of head scratching. I mean, over months and months. Because I put this in series position (and the reason for the in series position was to shut the naysayers up who just think that Jags are all about being bright), the in series position was in fact almost too dark at one point. So, I've [now] got a second filter, and that switch works when you're in the [series] position (and that becomes a big giant humbucking pickup) – you've still got the hi-pass filter, but there's a further filter that slims it out somewhat.
Perhaps due to a mid-performance incident at one of the summer festivals that year, the two upper bass bout switches were recessed to prevent accidental switching when playing. Presumably for speed, Puplett cut custom control plates for both the four-way selector switch and hi-pass filters from mirrored acrylic rather than the chrome that would ultimately adorn the production model. The selector blade was upgraded with a chrome barrel switch tip. Marr’s preferred 1965 neck was swapped to the second prototype body (the present lot) and the guitar was delivered to Marr ahead of The Cribs performance at T in the Park festival in Kinross, Scotland, on 11 July 2010. Speaking to Burrluck in 2012, Marr recalled: When the guitar came back to me after the polarities had been changed, I was playing it in the dressing room before a festival gig and the guitar sounded different, it's subtle, but it's more in focus. Evidently Puplett and Moore were still testing tremolo systems at this point, as an unusual design can be seen in shots from The Cribs’ performances at various festivals that August. No doubt this was the trem that Marr referenced when he told Bacon: We tried locking trems, angled trems, and one time with The Cribs, I was out on stage, looked down at the latest modified trem, and I thought: “Why have I got a Victorian tap on my guitar?"
After debuting the second prototype at T in the Park, Marr was evidently so satisfied with the new model that he went on to use it for a career highlight performance with an orchestra at the Inception premiere in Los Angeles only two days later on 13 July 2010, having recorded the score with Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer earlier that year. The inception premiere was mad, Marr reflects in a 2013 Facebook short, because I played T in the Park with The Cribs the night before I travelled, so I went straight from the stage after the Cribs set and got on the plane… It was the premiere of the movie, and then everyone who was at the premiere went across the road from the Chinese Theatre into this venue, but they didn't know that we were behind the curtain… I think it might be the first time I played with an orchestra, but because the guitar is the featured instrument on the Inception soundtrack, I was involved quite a bit. It was a big moment, you know… it was kind of an amazing night. It was the start of my soundtrack career with Hans Zimmer, which still goes on to this day. Back in the UK, Marr used this guitar to film The Cribs’ official music video for their surprise one-off single, ‘Housewife’, for release on 9 August 2010. Marr continued to road test the second prototype for the remainder of The Cribs summer festival tour, which included Spain’s Benicàssim on 17 July, Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival on 30 July, Chicago’s Lollapalooza on 8 August, and Leeds and Reading on 27 and 29 August 2010, the latter of which was broadcast live by the BBC. Reading Festival would turn out to be Marr’s final performance with The Cribs, as he would leave the band the following April to focus on the solo material that would become his 2013 solo debut.
After four years of touring, testing and refining, Marr was finally satisfied that he had built the perfect Jaguar. This the instrument I've been using for the last few years almost exclusively, Marr proclaims in the Fender promo, and the reason I've been using it exclusively is to try and road test it in almost every situation, because I figured that if I'm going to put my name on a guitar and work with Fender on building an instrument, I just wanted it to be as good as it can be. Presumably, the tremolo design was finalised and the approved second prototype delivered to Fender in late 2010 for exact reproduction as the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar, which would be released in 2012. By the time I’d finished it, wrote Marr in 2016, my signature Jaguar had evolved into what I consider to be perfection, and it was only then that I gave it to Fender to remake it faithfully so that every one with my name on is identical to mine.
I became obsessive about getting the guitar right, Marr told Kelly, but it paid off in the end. I see it as an honour having your name on a guitar, like Chet Atkins or Les Paul. I know that there are lots of signature models out there these days, but I took mine very seriously…. We changed almost everything there is to change on the Jaguar, except the headstock and machine heads. The sound ended up as a culmination of almost everything I do on records. We made it so it rings out like a Rickenbacker or a clean Gibson Les Paul, and chimes like a Gretsch. Essentially, it sounds like three of my old guitars all at once. I'm able to do it all with my one guitar. Interviewed for Guitar & Bass magazine in 2017, Marr acknowledged: Having my own guitar with Fender is one of the things I’m most proud of. I’d put it up there with the top three things in my career that I’m most proud of, without a doubt. It might even be the thing I’m most proud of in my career.
Marr became obsessed with Jaguars and Jazzmasters, buying up numerous vintage examples in addition to the precious 1965 model he had procured from Brock, and using them almost exclusively for the next three years as he toured and recorded with Modest Mouse. It was while recording the band’s 2007 album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank that Marr first had the idea to build his own Jaguar and wasted no time in enlisting legendary British luthier Bill Puplett, his go-to guitar sage and technician of more than twenty years, to help with the project. A couple of my friends had guitars that didn't come off the conveyor belt at the airport, Marr told Total Guitar’s Henry Yates in 2010. I realised I'd be heartbroken if these guitars went missing. So, I got the idea of working with Bill on a Jaguar that was mainly an off-the-peg guitar, that would work after Bill had set it up. But I was sorely, sorely mistaken because we'd say, well, what about the pickups, the switches, the pots... not to mention the big mission – the bridge! Playing arenas across the US up to five nights a week, Marr was in the perfect position to road test over a dozen vintage Jags over the course of the band’s epic 20-month tour, working out what he did and didn’t like about each guitar and feeding his suggestions and frustrations back to Puplett at his north-west London workshop. At some point during the tour, Fender got wind of the project and offered to develop it as a signature guitar. What we agreed was that I would make this guitar – with a fair amount of obsessive-compulsive disorder – and then deliver it to them as my perfect Jag, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. They said, “Great, you do that, and we’ll just make it.”
PROTOTYPE #1
With Fender on board to provide parts as required, Puplett’s first working prototype made it into Marr’s hands around the time that he returned to Manchester and began working with UK indie rock group The Cribs after the mammoth Modest Mouse tour drew to a close in July 2008. Having become friendly with the band’s bassist Gary Jarman in Portland, Marr had begun playing casually with The Cribs in early 2008 with the intention of writing a few songs together for an EP. The four-day EP session would morph into Marr co-writing The Cribs’ fourth album Ignore The Ignorant and lead to a three-year stint in the band. It was during their performance at Leeds Festival on 22 August 2008 that Marr was introduced as a member of the band for the first time and first seen on stage with a working prototype. At this point, many of Marr’s suggested modifications had already been implemented by Puplett and would be refined further over the next two years of extensive use on stage and in the studio with The Cribs. It’s a hybrid of all the good bits of my old Jags, Marr told Yates. The really important thing is that I love the Jag as it was, and I think it's perfection, which is kind of an interesting place to start. In spite of that, there are a number of unwanted conditions that don't cut it night after night. For instance, the individual pickup on/off switches: if ever there was an unwanted condition on an electric guitar, it's being able to switch it off! … I want to beat the naysayers, Marr admits. A few of my mates run a mile as soon as they see [a Jaguar]. I almost feel a duty to correct as much as I can without changing what I love about it.
BODY AND NECK
The starting point for the development of Marr’s perfect Jag was Fender's American Vintage '62 Jaguar body, which Marr and Puplett reshaped with a more generous cutaway and forearm contour to sit more comfortably against the player’s body. The longer rear scoop was copied from Marr’s 1963 Lake Placid Blue Jaguar, while the front chamfer was copied from a 1954 Strat. You know how it gets very thin on that bass-side edge – we've gone in that direction, but not quite that thin, Puplett told Guitarist’s Dave Burrluck in 2012. Marr was mindful that the neck profile should suit not only him, but a wider spectrum of players, including those who might have traditionally found the Jaguar neck too skinny. After trying numerous vintage neck profiles, Marr kept coming back to a fuller 1965 neck that he'd been given by a friend who had heard of his growing reputation as a “Jag freak”. It’s slightly more substantial than the regular ’62 or ’63 neck, which I think is going to please people who don’t get on with the small necks on the Jags, Marr told Yates. Speaking to Guitarist in 2012, Marr recounts: By this time, we had a working prototype guitar, with a '62 reissue body. I usually play 63 necks and that was the first time l made this conscious shift to the idea of the guitar evolving from less than an entirely authentic ‘63 or ‘62 Jag. Evidently, Marr settled on this 1965 neck reasonably early in the development process as it was seen with the first prototype body from August 2008 onwards. By 2009, the headstock would display a tiny shamrock and 'J' for 'Johnny' sticker. This favoured 1965 neck would ultimately be transferred onto the second Puplett prototype (the present lot) in around July 2010 when it would supersede the first.
BRIDGE AND TREMOLO
An early modification, which Marr had successfully made to several of his vintage Jags, was to replace the original threaded saddles with heavier Mustang bridge saddles to stop the strings slipping out. Puplett then sought the expertise of engineer John Moore to assist with a redesign of the notoriously problematic Jaguar bridge, which would often self-adjust with heavy tremolo use, reducing string height over time. One of the great things about the Jag is the sound and the tremolo unit, Marr told Guitar & Bass Magazine’s Hayden Hewitt in 2012, but all the vibration makes the screws actually turn themselves round. I went through all the old wives’ tales. I put Locktite on, but the vibrations were so strong that the screws still turned round. I even tried nail polish, all of that. Then I'd get to a soundcheck after a dozen shows, try my pedals and say “what's that sound?” It was like digital distortion, and it was always because the bridge had dropped down. Puplett explains: This is to do with using a Jaguar with light strings, not the heavier gauge it was designed for. You didn't get the same problem back then because the bridge was under much more pressure, he told Burrluck. But with lighter strings, these height adjustment screws start to work loose. They vibrate. So after a little experimentation we ended with John Moore's design, which adds nylon inserts. The legs of the bridge are changed and it's got beefier screws so there's more mass, and the inserts make it almost impossible for the screws to work loose. But it still gives the same rocking motion on the vibrato, as is on the original. Another John Moore design eliminated any play in the tremolo with a nylon bushing to hold the bar firmly in place. It's still a push-fit, Puplett told Burrluck, but it's gripping all of the end of the arm, not just the bottom, so the vibrato action is a lot more responsive, there's tension for the swing but no play at all. It's actually now more Bigsby-like and with good pitch return. Speaking to Hewitt in 2012, Marr adds: As soon as you touch it, it responds, and it also doesn't move around because we added a plastic sleeve inside. You think you'd come up with that in seconds, but no, it took 18 months. We tried all sorts of screws and bolts and all manner of locking systems on there, and it was only by going through all these 'almost right' systems we eventually came up with the solution of having the arm fitted into the bushing.
SWITCHING AND PICKUPS
One of the most critical mods for Marr was simplifying the guitar’s switching system. Normally on an old Jag you have three switches [on the upper treble bout], he told Hewitt. Two of them switch the pickups on, and one is a high-pass filter. Now, crucially, those two also switch the pickups off, so when you're playing in a band like The Cribs and there's a lot of rhythm playing going on and the other guitarist is leaning on you… it means the guitar can just switch off. To elucidate, Marr told us: In the late 50s and particularly the early 60s, a lot of the radio bands that would play with orchestras were in studios that were built near power lines. So, if you were sat there on a live broadcast with an orchestra and you weren’t going to come in on your Jaguar or your Gretsch until bar 124, you didn’t want your guitar buzzing, so you switched the pickups off because there weren’t mute pedals. But for an indie rock guitar player in 2025 or, indeed, a grunge guitar player in 1993, you end up having to put duct tape over those annoying switches, because when you’re grunging out, it’s so easy to switch the guitar off. So that was one of the very first things that I changed. When first seen on stage in August 2008, the first prototype still bore its stock three switch lead circuit controls, but it wasn’t long before Puplett suggested replacing the former with a single four-way Telecaster style switchblade, allowing the player to select either the bridge pickup, both pickups in parallel, the neck pickup, or both pickups in series, the latter acting like a giant humbucker, with a darker tone than usually heard from a Jaguar. I’m often changing pickup position in the middle of songs, Marr told Yates, and [previously] you’d actually have to do two actions to switch one pickup off and the other one on. So I’ve got a four-way Telecaster switch, and what the extra fourth position does is give me the opportunity to put both pickups in series.
I was working on [the signature model] every day and I would have a prototype we thought was right, Marr told Hewitt. I used [the first prototype] on the Inception soundtrack [in early 2010], when normally the situation would call for an SG sound or a 335 sound, and I would pull out my white Jag and you could see the engineer thinking “That guitar is not going to do the job,” and I [would think] “Hang on a minute!” [To combat such prior assumptions], I decided we need this to have a series position and a humbucking position... A little bit of me wanted to take on board criticisms of the guitar from naysayers and see if l could fix them – like people assuming [Jaguars] are too bright. The pickups are darker sounding, but still a Jag. Not wanting to lose the hi-pass filter, Marr and Puplett ditched the arcane rhythm circuit instead and relocated the hi-pass filter to the upper bass bout where the rhythm/lead circuit selector was previously located. The fourth position being an “in series” position meant that I no longer had the hi-pass filter down here, and I use the hi-pass filter a lot, Marr explains in Fender’s introductory video for the Johnny Marr signature Jaguar in 2012. I think it's one of the best things about the Jaguar. So, the regular old tone switch, the circuit switch, now becomes a hi-pass filter.
Bare Knuckle Pickups founder Tim Mills custom wound the pickups to replicate those found on Marr’s 1962 Jag. Out of the four or five Jaguars that I own I've got a '62 Jaguar that has a killer dark sound, Marr told Burrluck. There's never any problem with Jags being bright, and it wasn't that these were duller, but they are darker, almost like it had spring reverb on it – like a garage-rock sound, more middly, darker low-mids. It took several attempts to achieve the exact sound Marr was searching for. We got the bridge pickup sounding right after about five goes, Puplett recalled. Tim was winding them exactly like the originals, just varying the winding. We had a lot more trouble with the neck pickup... I think we had about eight or nine sets before we found a balance between the bridge and neck.
PROTOTYPE #2
Marr continued to use and test the first prototype extensively until mid-2010, when further modifications were made to the switching and pickups on a second prototype body built from a 2008 American Vintage '62 Jaguar (the present lot). This second prototype body was similarly contoured, refinished and customised by Bill Puplett to reproduce all of the modifications that had been made successfully on the first, before further refinements were made. The original Jaguar pickups are opposite polarity, north and south, Puplett told Burrluck, but we found that when you put opposite polarity pickups in series, it sounds too woolly. If you put them both in the same polarity, and this is something we went over with Tim Mills, the series sound is a lot more usable. So that's what we went with. Marr elaborates in the Fender introductory video: It changes the sound quite a lot. Normally on guitars, for noise reduction… the polarities of both pickups go in a different direction. We figured that for my guitar we should do it the same as was on a Telecaster, which is that the polarity of the magnets go in the same direction. And in effect, what that does, is it means that the string isn't being pulled in two different directions, and it actually makes the guitar sound more focused, and clearer, even acoustically.
Switching the pickups to the same polarity, however, created a new problem, Puplett explained: the series sound was [now] too over the top for Johnny, too much bottom-end. So that's when we added the second hi-pass filter. On the first prototype, the redundant volume and tone wheels of the Jag’s old rhythm circuit had been retained on the guitar for aesthetic purposes. Thanks to Cribs’ drummer Ross Jarman, who questioned why anyone would buy an instrument with a knob that didn’t do anything, the two wheels were discarded in favour of a single switch for the second hi-pass filter. I wanted to keep the aesthetic the same as the [original] guitar that I loved, Marr explains in the Fender promo, but get rid of some of the things that I didn’t need and therefore feel like most modern guitar players don't need… I wanted to keep [the chrome control plate on the upper horn] but get rid of the tone circuit… [and yet] still have that kind of two switch thing like the old Jag. And a solution presented itself after a lot of head scratching. I mean, over months and months. Because I put this in series position (and the reason for the in series position was to shut the naysayers up who just think that Jags are all about being bright), the in series position was in fact almost too dark at one point. So, I've [now] got a second filter, and that switch works when you're in the [series] position (and that becomes a big giant humbucking pickup) – you've still got the hi-pass filter, but there's a further filter that slims it out somewhat.
Perhaps due to a mid-performance incident at one of the summer festivals that year, the two upper bass bout switches were recessed to prevent accidental switching when playing. Presumably for speed, Puplett cut custom control plates for both the four-way selector switch and hi-pass filters from mirrored acrylic rather than the chrome that would ultimately adorn the production model. The selector blade was upgraded with a chrome barrel switch tip. Marr’s preferred 1965 neck was swapped to the second prototype body (the present lot) and the guitar was delivered to Marr ahead of The Cribs performance at T in the Park festival in Kinross, Scotland, on 11 July 2010. Speaking to Burrluck in 2012, Marr recalled: When the guitar came back to me after the polarities had been changed, I was playing it in the dressing room before a festival gig and the guitar sounded different, it's subtle, but it's more in focus. Evidently Puplett and Moore were still testing tremolo systems at this point, as an unusual design can be seen in shots from The Cribs’ performances at various festivals that August. No doubt this was the trem that Marr referenced when he told Bacon: We tried locking trems, angled trems, and one time with The Cribs, I was out on stage, looked down at the latest modified trem, and I thought: “Why have I got a Victorian tap on my guitar?"
After debuting the second prototype at T in the Park, Marr was evidently so satisfied with the new model that he went on to use it for a career highlight performance with an orchestra at the Inception premiere in Los Angeles only two days later on 13 July 2010, having recorded the score with Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer earlier that year. The inception premiere was mad, Marr reflects in a 2013 Facebook short, because I played T in the Park with The Cribs the night before I travelled, so I went straight from the stage after the Cribs set and got on the plane… It was the premiere of the movie, and then everyone who was at the premiere went across the road from the Chinese Theatre into this venue, but they didn't know that we were behind the curtain… I think it might be the first time I played with an orchestra, but because the guitar is the featured instrument on the Inception soundtrack, I was involved quite a bit. It was a big moment, you know… it was kind of an amazing night. It was the start of my soundtrack career with Hans Zimmer, which still goes on to this day. Back in the UK, Marr used this guitar to film The Cribs’ official music video for their surprise one-off single, ‘Housewife’, for release on 9 August 2010. Marr continued to road test the second prototype for the remainder of The Cribs summer festival tour, which included Spain’s Benicàssim on 17 July, Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival on 30 July, Chicago’s Lollapalooza on 8 August, and Leeds and Reading on 27 and 29 August 2010, the latter of which was broadcast live by the BBC. Reading Festival would turn out to be Marr’s final performance with The Cribs, as he would leave the band the following April to focus on the solo material that would become his 2013 solo debut.
After four years of touring, testing and refining, Marr was finally satisfied that he had built the perfect Jaguar. This the instrument I've been using for the last few years almost exclusively, Marr proclaims in the Fender promo, and the reason I've been using it exclusively is to try and road test it in almost every situation, because I figured that if I'm going to put my name on a guitar and work with Fender on building an instrument, I just wanted it to be as good as it can be. Presumably, the tremolo design was finalised and the approved second prototype delivered to Fender in late 2010 for exact reproduction as the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar, which would be released in 2012. By the time I’d finished it, wrote Marr in 2016, my signature Jaguar had evolved into what I consider to be perfection, and it was only then that I gave it to Fender to remake it faithfully so that every one with my name on is identical to mine.
I became obsessive about getting the guitar right, Marr told Kelly, but it paid off in the end. I see it as an honour having your name on a guitar, like Chet Atkins or Les Paul. I know that there are lots of signature models out there these days, but I took mine very seriously…. We changed almost everything there is to change on the Jaguar, except the headstock and machine heads. The sound ended up as a culmination of almost everything I do on records. We made it so it rings out like a Rickenbacker or a clean Gibson Les Paul, and chimes like a Gretsch. Essentially, it sounds like three of my old guitars all at once. I'm able to do it all with my one guitar. Interviewed for Guitar & Bass magazine in 2017, Marr acknowledged: Having my own guitar with Fender is one of the things I’m most proud of. I’d put it up there with the top three things in my career that I’m most proud of, without a doubt. It might even be the thing I’m most proud of in my career.