Experimenting on a Jaguar guitar with a vintage set up. Other guitars used include an Epiphone Les Paul.

love the chaos!
My antidote to too much order!

This is so good!

The call of the wild
There's a ringing in my ears!
the coyotes are plotting with the owls!
It could be a coup!

a little Morricone buried way back there.
I did sit down and listen to lot of his soundtracks a while ago. That guitar sound is so essential, the Jag does it best, but you need heavy strings, engage the strangle switch on the lead circuit, have some compression, lots of reverb and some amp tremolo, play near that unstable bridge with a metal pick, quiver and scoop that vintage whammy and brush those strings behind the bridge - delicious sounds

something now gathers

Fender rules!
While one couldn't live without Gibson, Gretsch, Rickenbacker etc., etc., I think the Fender is the desert island guitar. If that is your only choice, you'd have to go Fender.

almost a vintage video game in there. fabulous.
Yeah, a few of my tracks draw that comparison, although I don't know what video games are!

oh, but that jag sounds great, and you are letting it dictate terms (i mean that in the best way)
You are right. I used to be a 'one guitar man'. The concept being that you have one guitar, that's your signature sound, and you try to get as many different sounds from it as you can. You only go to another guitar when your main instrument can't possibly do that. Now I am polyguitarous; each guitar suggests a certain sounds which is its essential sound; I therefore use a lot of different guitars for their essential sounds, which they dictate, as you say. This track is an experiment in that. The Jag is obvious; but there's a fat toned lead guitar which is a Les Paul, because only a Paul can do that authentically; there's another lead guitar doing double bends which is a 339 - again, something which sits well with that instrument.

This is like time-travelling through the sixties. It starts off in the early sixties with the evocative tremolo guitar, moves onto the Radiophonic Workshop era, before finishing in psychedelia and Ravi Shankar. A most nostalgic trip.
Something went wrong after 1974. Probably deeper economic/spiritual reasons - something to do with the Illuminati. For my part, colours and sounds [which are interchangeable for me] were never the same again. The sitar effect was putting the Jaguar through the EHX Ravish Sitar pedal which one day I will sit down with and try to work out how to use it properly [or I might just buy a sitar with a pick up, which would probably be easier].

I hope you have your Jaguar under your bed!

It just keeps wanting you to go back to the swamps of space it seems!
Ah - that would have been a good title - 'swamps of space' has that earthly/unearthly ambiguity - not many liken space to a swamp - a sea, maybe. But I'm with you: space is swamp.
The neighborhood where I spent most of my youth was built on reclaimed swamp, so I have a certain affinity for it - the only "open spaces" were bogs that were unsuitable for development per se.

If there was a band playing along in a 1960s computer room, this would be it!
It was the vintage Jag which suggested this whole 60s vibe to me - but then late mid to late 60s and early seventies is my favourite sonic era
Yea, it's my baseline simply because it's before the rules got put in and solidified - where it was ok to run an echo unit into the front of a cranked amp because, well, you didn't have a choice live, etc.

Spiral squeals and squirrels, oh boy!
That's mainly Korg Volca Bass, Korg Kaoss Pad and Theremin - put those together and you have a retro synth
Yep, the theremin and KP will get you there, and the Volca just cements it together!

Space surf, take me home!
I bought a second hand Squier Vintage Modified Jaguar last week - it was only £60 because some saddles were missing from the bridge and the lead circuit didn't work, only the rhythm one did. I changed the bridge - I read about how bad the vintage Jag bridges are, but I realised that they were designed to move with the trem - main modern objection is that the bridge isn't stable - it isn't meant to be! Problem is, it needs heavy strings. So I got a set of heavy strings and the vintage bridge works really well. And that's when I got that instant surf sound. But I realised that Leo had designed a radically different guitar to the Tele/Strat. This set up works completely differently. When I checked out the lead circuit I found that the treble switch had either been disabled or had worked loose. Pretty easy to snap it back - and hey presto - lead circuit back with its cavernous treble. You can't get that sound on anything else.
The modified part of the vintage is a flatter neck radius and seymour duncan designed pick ups - but they have the teeth and everything and sound Jaguar like. I realised that my Revelation guitars, which beorrow some Jag features are really on Strat type guitars with off set bodies. And even the Jag trem doesn't work properly unless you have the rocking bridge, as here. Bridges which are fixed and so forth don't allow that rocking where the acre of behind the bridge string is stirred into sympathetic resonance - you can hear it on the intro and outro to this track. Also, Leo enabled a guitar, with its dual lead and rhythm circuits, to give an almost schizophrenic range between muffled jazz tones and barbed wire treble - at the flick of a slider, and at contrasting volumes.
Whoever had this guitar before me mistreated it - I feel like I have saved an abandoned dog - I presume they were an Indie type who would have been better off with a Cobain Jagstang thing, more suited to hard rock. You can't throw the vintage Jag around - it's like a semi-acoustic in that sense. But it is such a rad design - I'm even more convinced of Leo's genius.
Can also make them work with anything 10s and up - the big thing is to Loctite the saddle screws down if they move, and shim the neck if necessary. With those two things, I've never *not* been able to get an offset to intonate and set up well then work on adjusting the trem to taste! And at that price, I'd have gotten another, even though I certainly don't need a third!
Yep, the genius of the design is that it allows somebody to compensate for the room, the amp they're using, the overall mix, etc - without having to do anything beyond the guitar itself. The trem and electronics are what make the thing what it is, I have one without the rhythm circuit (it has coil blend for each pickup in its place and a killswitch), but that guitar can easily cop the standard sounds because of the buckers and everything else. That and I use it as the synth monster!
That's the joy and the heartbreak of the offset revival, they're being bought by kids who don't understand that they don't do that sort of thing out of the box, and there's a reason Cobain and Sonic Youth hacked them to bits to get what they wanted. Back then it was a case of "They're the only cheap playable guitars around!" when electrics in the US playable for new ones started at $400, but you could get a beat up Jaguar or Mustang (and sometimes Jazzmaster, but a lot of those got stolen and parted out to make fake vintage Strats because of the 25.5" necks)...
A couple of decades before that, Tom Verlaine used a Jazzmaster for the same reason of economy, although it being the late 70s not so many people copied him. And Jimi used a Jazzmaster with Little Richard - I think he would have latched on to delicate nature of that set up and knew that Strats were the way to go for crash and burn guitar [and you weren't going to hear surf music no more!]. McLaughlin got a Mustang to use with Tony Williams and Miles as he was broke at the time, and couldn't afford a Strat, but the shortscale Mustang was a happy accident for him, he being used to Gibsons. A lot of the modern off set versions are closer to Strats, Teles and Mustangs - a standard Jag mod is to put a Mustang bridge on there - but that's a different string spacing. Even seen guys with tunamatic bridges on Jazzmasters and Jags.
Sorry Robert, do you have two Jags? Would be good if you could have a list of all your gear as a link on your profile page!
On this track the top string is a 12 - that's minimum heavy - but the vintage bridge began to behave much better, and as I moved the trem arm, I saw that bridge rocking from side to side - that's what it was designed to do. I know many advocate securing the grub screws under the bridge posts, and I would do that with a light string set up - but with heavier strings it doesn't seem as necessary. Of course, the intonation is never going to be as accurate as a Strat, let alone a Steinberger, but it is worth it to get all that extra resonance.
It'd be an ostentatious list of crazy, but yea, two, a Classic Player HH and a Squier VM. Two Mustangs as well (a MIJ '69 RI domestic market thing with three pickups, and a Squier VM), then let's see...the V, the LP, the 339, the boring ol' P Bass, a 20-something year old Jazz Bass, the Casino, the VI, a '98 MIM Squier Strat I bought new when I could afford a guitar after moving out here and having to dump everything that was my main (and often only) guitar for years, the Squier Mascis Jazzmaster, the Ibanez with Kaoss pad, think that's everything with strings!
Yea, the Mustang bridge was relatively common as there was a bunch of them in parts bins and the Fender dealers and so many Jags and JMs had lost their bridges in storage or whatnot, and it was often restoring the higher value of the assembled parts. The modern "no bridge, remove the electronics" kills any interest for me - even my Jag with buckers still has the strangle switch (or I wouldn't have bought it!). That Jag and the Mascis come stock with TOM bridges but standard trems, albeit moved a little closer to the bridge. Neither is missing the quintessential harp noises or resonance. My first "good" guitar I bought myself after my USA Hamer Explorer thing died in a stage accident (it was a gift from a friend who didn't play metal any longer, and an amazing one at that) that popped off the headstock was a '64 natural refin Mustang.
It was a whopping $175 at the time, and I was steered to it by a local dealer who set me up with a ton of stuff because I wasn't an idiot and didn't come in trying to play "Stairway" every day. It had a early EMG single-coil in the neck as well as the original had fried, and was the only gigging guitar I used in the formative years. Stupid me didn't realize the Hamer could be fixed so I stripped off the electronics and hardware and it got lost in the shuffle by the time I found out you could fix such things. Ye Olde Mustang (and BF Bassman head and Space Echo, 1991ish): media.furtkamp.com/rob199x.jpg
Yea, there's no need to adjust the posts if it's set up right, even with 10s. It's more touchy than setting up one with 12s, that's for sure, but....I accept it as part fo the beast. Intonation can be spot on honestly, it's just a matter of patience and getting it to fly. If the Jag didn't intonate perfectly, I couldn't use it as a synth guitar (even though that one has a TOM for the bridge) - or the VI either, and the VI is completely, totally stock except for some Loctite on the bridge and changed knobs and a sticker!
Good point about the synth tracking!
Like to see that in list form with a pic next to each entry [and maybe a heads up examples of RF albums/tracks where they are featured]
What made you choose offsets during that period [given that you use Pauls and Vs more often these days]?
I don't have great photos of some of them, I just haven't bothered is the joke!
What happened to that Mustang in the pic? And what guitar is hanging on the wall?
The yellow monster is where I can't get to it right now (they're going to be doing floor work in the apartment so I have stuff compressed to the "what I want immediate access to": media.furtkamp.com/339-mustang-pba…casino-2017.jpg
Squier Jag: media.furtkamp.com/squierjag-zim.jpg
Ye Olde Jaguar HH: media.furtkamp.com/jaguargk3-full.jpg
Squier Mustang: media.furtkamp.com/onemustanginsightoftwo.jpg
At that point, it was "cheapest anything playable" was really the Mustangs - after playing the USA Hamer as a first guitar I had pretty high standards. The Mexi Strats etc had just come out and were still $450ish new then (the price didn't drop until the late 90s and used ones weren't available). Squiers of the time were teh old Korean junk you couldn't get me to play if you paid me, and I can't play any Tele I've ever handled without my left forearm cramping up like I was rock climbing after 20 years of not doing it after a few minutes of playing, so they've always been not of this world. Gibson then was just beyond my means - even used studios then were $900+, and as much as I missed the Hamer (which was a top-line Explorer clone with a Kahler trem), the Mustang just felt right.
Maybe it was the 24" scale after playing the 24.75", maybe it was just the neck, not sure. I spent money in those days on recording gear and effects mostly more than bonus guitars - my backup for gigs was a then-new-to-the-market Yahama Pacifica. It played, there was nothing wrong with it, but it had no mojo.
No idea why SC toasted the comments and played "post the same one", argh.
That's how it came (other than the racing stripe, I added that), it came stock with three pickups (real Duncans) and it was for the Japanese market.
Original since I still had it in notepad, At that point, it was "cheapest anything playable" was really the Mustangs - after playing the USA Hamer as a first guitar I had pretty high standards. The Mexi Strats etc had just come out and were still $450ish new then (the price didn't drop until the late 90s and used ones weren't available). Squiers of the time were teh old Korean junk you couldn't get me to play if you paid me, and I can't play any Tele I've ever handled without my left forearm cramping up like I was rock climbing after 20 years of not doing it after a few minutes of playing, so they've always been not of this world. Gibson then was just beyond my means - even used studios then were $900+, and as much as I missed the Hamer (which was a top-line Explorer clone with a Kahler trem), the Mustang just felt right.
And not sure which you're looking, there's none on the wall, the yellow monster is 339 (close), white P bass, Casino, and the yellow monster!
Did the Squier Jag come with the red pickgaurd?
Oh, yea, I forgot I changed it when I did the speed knobs (a standard on almost all my guitars), good catch!
No the old black and white pic of you playing the Mustang around '91
Yea, the tort guard was standard for the Mustangs of the time. It was originally Oly White from what I could tell what was left in the PU cavities, but fell victim to the "let's natural refin everything" of the 70s.
Oh, now I'm confused, damn it. Argh. Ye Original Mustang came that way to me in every respect, I only ever changed strings!
It was a '64 first year Fender with rosewood slab, I missed it for years and would dream of it occasionally even after getting the '69 yellow monster, ironically the Squier VM one made those dreams go away. It's cheap but it's dead right.