Jag review
Inevitably I succumbed to my lizard brain and purchased a new guitar. I bought a Fender Player 2 Jaguar in Arctic White and have owned it for about 4 days...
Positives
Straight out of the box it looked really good. The fit and finish is top notch. The frets are nice and shiny; the back of the neck has a lovely satin coating that's smooth to the touch and easy to use; the tuners and the vibrato are significantly better than the Squier equivalent.
Negatives
The rosewood fretboard is drier than Dusty the Dustman's dried dust collection. The fret ends, whilst not hand-shreddingly sharp, feel quite unfinished and unpleasant. There's also a sitar-like twang to the B and top E strings, which is the result of a badly cut nut.
Initially I was pretty disappointed. It's my first Fender and from all the stuff I've read about Fender quality v Squier quality, I expected my socks to be well and truly knocked off by this guitar compared to my Squier Classic Vibe Jag. In reality, it initially felt more like a step down to an Affinity rather than a step up from Squier's top quality level.
But then I plugged it into an amp and played it for half an hour and it made a great sounding, sock-removing noise. Whether it's my subconscious bias of "this is a Fender" playing tricks, but it seemed to have a much fuller sound than the Squier. Having played it more times, the sitar effect seems to have died down a little, too.
Just for the sound alone I am keeping it. I am quite disappointed that a guitar almost double the original price of its Squier equivalent required Brand New Squier levels of fettling (tidy the nut slots, polish the fret ends, oil the fretboard and sort the intonation out), I didn't expect this from a Fender.
So fatter strings have been purchased, the decision will be made to swap the boring black scratchplate for something different and I will go from there.