Iconic Mods: Nels Cline's '69 Jaguar and '59 Jazzmaster

Wilco guitarist Nels Cline is a longtime fan of Fender Jazzmasters and Jaguars, as his interest was first piqued when he heard Television’s seminal 1977 album, Marquee Moon.

But even though Television frontman Tom Verlaine championed the Jazzmaster throughout the band’s heyday, it wasn’t until many years later when Sonic Youth – and fellow Jazzmaster aficionados Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo – came up in the early ‘80s that Cline was finally compelled to start playing Fender offset guitars.

That tradition still holds strong today, as Cline often plays either a Jazzmaster or Jaguar whether he’s with Wilco or one of his many other projects.

Cline is probably best known for his 1959 Jazzmaster, an incredibly weathered instrument he originally bought from legendary bassist Mike Watt of Minutemen, Dos and Firehose.

It’s a wonder that guitar is still in his arsenal, considering how it looks like it has a lifetime of stories. The Jazzmaster was black when Cline first acquired it, but years and years of play have worn off a good portion of the paint on the top. In addition, Cline has broken nearly everything on it except the knobs and the pickups at one point or another.

“My go-to guitar is my ’59 Jazzmaster; it’s my number one, and it looks like it’s been through a war. I guess it has been through my own personal war,” (he told Guitar World](https://www.guitarworld.com/gw-archive/interview-jeff-tweedy-and-nels-cline-discuss). “That’s the guitar on the ‘Almost’ solo. I joke with Jeff [Tweedy, Wilco frontman)that I’m not really sure why I own any guitars other than Jazzmasters, because I’m never really unhappy playing one; I can pretty much get any sound I want out of it.”

The ’59 Jazzmaster’s main modification is its Mastery bridge. Dating back to his early years with Jazzmasters and Jaguars, Cline realized that he liked playing the strings behind the bridge, and as he grew more familiar with these iconic models, the California native began installing the Mastery bridge on all of his offsets.

Cline’s 1969 Jaguar, which is lovingly dubbed the “Silver Bastard,” has even more mods, however. Of course, there’s the Mastery bridge, but he also added a pair of custom-wound pickups. Taking a page from a Telecaster owned by Tweedy, Cline installed a warm Charlie Christian pickup in the neck position and a super-hot Jaguar pickup in the bridge for balance.

The Jaguar also has an undeniable aesthetic appeal. Someone – Cline isn’t sure who – painted the eBay purchase a version of Aztec Silver, matched the headstock and added a gaudy mirrored pickguard. It is so eye-catching, Cline told Premier Guitar it’s the most “rock-and-roll” guitar he owns, as far as appearance goes.

While Cline loves how loud and clear the Jaguar is, he admitted that it can be difficult to wrangle, considering a previous owner had been pretty messy when working on the guts of the guitar.

Still, it’s that quirk that gave this '69 Jaguar its name.

“We call it the Silver Bastard because it was such a pain,” Cline said in the Fender video above. “Somebody epoxied all the wiring inside. People did some weird stuff in the ’60s and early ‘70s thinking that they were doing the right thing.”