Vintage or custom shop?

[Arthon]

the CS guitar will loose half its value immediately.

Not where I live (Montréal). Fender Custom Shop lose about 25%(or less if you have a good deal) of their value when you buy it, but since new guitar pricehave increased rapidly in the last few years, you can sell the guitar more or less the same price you buy it 5 years later.

You lose more money with small company like Danocaster, Kauer, Nash, Bilt, ect

Vintage guitars still make a better investment though

[bterry]

good point, markets are different...

In the US, we are flush with custom shop and master-built guitars, definitely more supply than demand, here.

[gringopig]

beauty! slab board?

A few (random) things to consider...

If you want vintage specs (radius, frets) it is still better to find a great vintage offset vs custom shop, IME.

If you want modern specs, consider a used custom shop or clean refin you can mod.

Newer guitars are more consistent in terms of playability, but, there are still many original offsets in clean, great playing condition that are just better sounding than the new ones and they are close enough in price that it’s worth the hunt.

By far, the most important thing is how you get along with the neck and pickups of whatever guitar you choose, regardless of the year in which it was made.

I think it goes w/o saying, but, if you put $5k into a clean vintage offset or $5k into a brand new custom shop, the value is heavily in favor of the vintage guitar. Supply vs demand and all that...the CS guitar will loose half its value immediately.

A slab board indeed! I took a peek under the covers last weekend and the thing is totally untouched and original. Not a wire out of place and solder intact.

[bterry]

congrats, those slab board jags are great guitars!

[gringopig]

I do have a bit of 50Hz hum going on though. All grounding is complete and hum vanishes when touching all metal parts (control cavity covers, strings/bridge/trem) and I've buzzed it out with a multimeter and all grounds read less than 1 Ohm. I suspect the original shielding was a bit dodgy on these. Maybe I'll try some shielding around the cavity between the pickups as with the pickguard off I can induce some hum just by moving my finger towards the wires. It also has a connection from the treble side collet to the vol/tone cavity plate via a thin wire and another thin wire to the aluminium pickguard shield so the connection is through the bridge thimbles. Maybe I'll ground that better....

Or keep my hands on the strings lol

[DeathJag]

This thread really helped me decide to never really pursue an original 60s guitar, too many factors for me, a non-luthier type. I was gonna go custom shop, then realized they wouldn’t be able to make the neck I envisioned. So I decided a ‘65 AVRI for body + hardware and ordered the fancy neck from Warmouth.

The whole thing might be ready in 2018...

[Jaguar018]

This thread really helped me decide to never really pursue an original 60s guitar, too many factors for me, a non-luthier type. I was gonna go custom shop, then realized they wouldn’t be able to make the neck I envisioned.

I think your plan sounds solid, but what neck could the custom shop not make? If you are talking about the 'production line' customs, you might be right, but the custom shop, with a custom order, should be able to make any neck you can think of.

[DeathJag]

This thread really helped me decide to never really pursue an original 60s guitar, too many factors for me, a non-luthier type. I was gonna go custom shop, then realized they wouldn’t be able to make the neck I envisioned.

I think your plan sounds solid, but what neck could the custom shop not make? If you are talking about the 'production line' customs, you might be right, but the custom shop, with a custom order, should be able to make any neck you can think of.

It’s wenge wood with an ebony fretboard. Pearloid binding with MoP block inlays. I looked at that missive about custom shop orders, but stopped when I didn’t see the thin neck I wanted. I then stopped considering it completely after realizing that doing it this way shaves about $3500 off the price!

[Jaguar018]

It’s wenge wood with an ebony fretboard. Pearloid binding with MoP block inlays. I looked at that missive about custom shop orders, but stopped when I didn’t see the thin neck I wanted. I then stopped considering it completely after realizing that doing it this way shaves about $3500 off the price!

It's way cheaper without Fender custom shop being involved, I'm not sure what the money loss ratio would be, but I suspect that a Fender Custom Shop guitar will retain a little more resale value than a Warmouth. Most would still want that money in their pocket.

About those MoP block inlays. Warmouth only does Gibson style blocks-- not Fender. If that is something that doesn't bother you, then cool. I LOVE Fender block inlays to a fault, so that particular aesthetic is super-duper important to me so Warmouth is off the table (unless of course, I just got a neck from them with NO blocks, and sent it somewhere else... ).

[gringopig]

Oh man - there are sunburst vintage Jaguars out there for you in the US that I would love to own but for CITES and for peanuts!!



A 1965 jag for less than a custom shop? It's £2936 quoted in GBP

https://www.themusiczoo.com/collections ... burst-1965

Why would you not want to own this? It's the real thing - a vintage pre-CBS Fender!

[oliver9419]

I got my '65 Jaguar for £2500 (British Sterling). I didn't know anything about the value of Jaguars but was shocked that you can pick up Jaguars quite often for less than the custom shop version... Just shows that sometimes, Fender's prices are a bit odd.

[Despot]

That's a really lovely old Jaguar OP - well bought!

Jag prices are a little weird. I've seen sunburst Jaguars pre-poly finish go for 2,500 euro - iirc there was even a beat up '62 that went for 2,700 euro a few years back and that was a beautiful guitar to play that sounded incredible. CS Jaguars here would have to be custom ordered rather than shop ordered on spec - spec ordered guitars are largely predictable Strats and Teles (Nocaster in various stages of relic, maybe a neck HB and rosewood neck early '60s spec Strats probably with a tort guard to make it stand out on the rack). That would mean a landed price of around 3k euro here in Ireland. Why buy CS if you can find vintage for that price?

Jazzmasters make more financial sense - JM prices have gone through the roof in the last couple of years. If a vintage '62/'63 is now pushing 5k euro then 3k on a CS model is a better argument for CS vs vintage.