I have owned my Squire Jaguar for over a year now. It has been my one-and-only bass for that long. I absolutely love this bass. This bass has gotten my through so many shows. My Jaguar looks great, feels great, sounds amazing, and the price is so nice. I picked mine up at Guitar Center for about $250.00.

Adjustments

Truss Rod

I did have to make some adjustments when I first bought my Jaguar. I had to adjust my truss rod. It was offset pretty bad.

String Height

I also had to adjust the string action. This wasn’t so bad, but it was a little high for my taste.

Intonation

Of course, almost every time you purchase a new bass the intonation will need to be set. Even though I have done this on so many different basses, I still refer to a specific set of videos when I do it again. I will post those videos at the bottom of this post.

Hardware

I replaced the round-wound strings with Labella Flatwounds. This is just a personal preference. I enjoy more of the Motown and Blues tones from a bass.
I also added the Hipshot Bass Extender Key. This gets me into a lot of trouble because I keep forgetting to switch it back to standard tuning. NOT GOOD when you are live.
I installed Schaller Strap Locks which wasn’t a good idea. The sturdiness of the strap lock stripped out the soft wood body of the bass. I ended up having to re-drill the holes and glue in a hardwood dowel, then re-drill the holes for the screws. It has held up great since then though.

The Good:

First… This bass is comfortable. It is well balanced and feels great. It features a Jazz Bass neck which is perfect for my little fingers. Next, it sounds great. The tones that are available from the two different pickups are plentiful. The pickup tones are not as clean as Fender pickups, but close enough to be enough.

My Settings:

• Deep Tone: Neck P/U 100%, Bridge P/U 25%, Active 0%, Tone 100%
• High Tone: Neck P/U 25%, Bridge P/U 100%, Active 25%, Tone 100%

The Bad

This bad list is by no fault of the bass itself. It has more to do with my personal preferences. I am 5’6″ tall with stubby little arms and fingers. The Squire Jaguar is 34′ scale which is a little long for me. I really have to reach to tune and to hit that low F. It also has Jumbo Frets. I can do it, but it is a stretch for my fingers to span 4 frets. I have bursitis in my shoulders and elbows so the weight gets to me just a little bit.
This is an active bass (my first). You absolutely have to carry an extra 9V battery. If the 9V battery dies, you get no sound. The good to this is that an Energizer battery can last a long time, months even. For me, I could tell when the battery was about to die, because the sound would start to distort. The distortion would get worse and more frequent as I lost battery life. It’s a good thing that I found this out at band practice and not a live gig.

The Ugly

The pots (knobs) got dirty real quick. Every time I turned a knob you would hear the static. This is an upgrade I would like to make in the future.

Summary

This is an awesome bass and the price is great. There is nothing extremely wrong with this bass that can’t be fixed with a minor upgrade. If it weren’t for my personal physical limitation, this may be the best bass I have ever owned.
If you have played or own a Squire Jaguar, I would love to hear what your experience with them were.