1968 Fender Jaguar Guitar Refinish & Rebuild

#electrical #audio-music #hands-on
August 06, 2025

I recently refinished and rebuilt a 1968 Fender Jaguar. Had previously built a Jaguar from parts in 2014 which I was quite fond of, but when the chance came to grab a “project grade” original it was too exciting to pass up. I let my previous Jaguar go, but decided to refinish this one in the same Ice Blue Metallic.

After getting and trying out the guitar, found that it played and sounded great. There were a few previous changes that had been done to this guitar:

The original bridge had been replaced with a Tune-o-matic style. The enlarging of the bridge holes done for this was messy, and the excess had been filled with glue/epoxy.
The guitar was originally Lake Placid Blue, with some fragments of the original finish remaining. It had since been refinished in burgundy, with overspray on some of the electronics, and then refinished with a natural clearcoat. There were many scratches and dings on the body.
All wiring had been re-done with newer plastic insulated wiring.

Disassembling

I decided on doing the following:

Scrape/clean off oversprayed paint from electronics
Bore out bridge holes further, plug with dowels, and re-drill for an original 60’s Mustang bridge.
Flatten warped pickguard using heat and pressure
Filling and sanding imperfections in the body, then refinishing in Ice Blue Metallic with nitro lacquer from Gracey’s
Re-wiring all electronics with old school cloth wiring, and doing a mod for series/parallel pickup configurations
Adding a replacement vibrato bar

Scraping off oversprayed paint from previous refinish