« No Frills Jag with P90s »

The Blacktop series of Fender guitars is a nice mid level line of guitars. They are usually stripped down rock machines with humbuckers or P90s. This model comes with P90s has it is based on the classic Jaguar design. The Jaguar for most of its history was a smaller less fancy version of the Fender Mustang. The Mustang usually got P90 style pickups while the Jaguar got single coils. This has the traditional Jaguar setup with a 24 inch scale neck and the large headstock. This makes the guitar a bit easier to play with less Tension on the strings. To make this guitar even simplier it comes with a tune-o-matic bridge which isnt very common on Fender guitars. The body is made from alder with the offset Jaguar design. The neck is a bolt on maple unit with a rosewood fretboard. The neck has 22 medium frets and a 9.5 inch radius. The shorter scale is helpful for people with smaller hands. Kurt Cobain liked the shorter scale on the Jaguar guitars. This means the frets are closer together so you do not need as much of a stretch to play chords. This also means that the tension on the strings is a bit lower which makes bending easier. This hurts if you plan on tuning down. This guitar works best in standard tuning with this shorter scale. The pickups are a set of P90s like I mentioned earlier and the controls are simple with a master volume and master tone with a 3 way switch. The tone from the P90 pickups is great. P90s are true single coils but they have a different sound than normal strat style single coils. They have a thicker sound that works better for heavy music and rock and roll. In the neck position you can get a great bluesey tone with a bit of dirt. P90s love a bit of overdrive. The bridge pickup is very raw and gritty. You can get great punk rock or classic rock tones with this. Like most of the Blacktop series this guitar is a great workhorse. It has all the things you need to rock out and nothing extra. The guitar plays very easily and has a great tone to it. All this combined with a reasonable price that just about everyone can afford new.