F$*king Cat People

Cats Suck (Unless You're Convinced Otherwise)

They're sneaky, shifty, lizard-tongued devils who train their owners to think that their selfish behaviour is "cute" and their bad behaviour is "personality". With razor sharp claws and needle teeth, they are, in my humble opinion, nothing but a prescription for minor lacerations and the inescapable smell of cat litter.

My personality can taste your sadness.

Like the people who enjoy that sort of thing, the people who seem to be drawn to Fender Jaguars are a similarly masochistic lot who seem uninterested in owning a great guitar. Instead, they would like a guitar that oozes "personality" by way of unstable tuning, convoluted switching, and not-quite-Strat-but-not-quite-Tele sounds.

Sounds like a winner to me...

Except everyone has got a price, and for me it was $299.99, back when the Canadian dollar was strong and the guitar industry had adjusted pricing accordingly (which typically takes forever in the downward direction...).  For three hundred bucks, I could  live with a stupid bridge and just-ok tuning.  Besides, I was already aware that these things could be fixed.

So I bought myself a cat, errr, Jaguar, and I FIXED it.

Ha. No babies for Jaguar. 

And despite not being a cat person at all, I learned to appreciate the Jaguar. It mostly stayed in tune, the short-scale was a novelty to be enjoyed every so often, and it looked great on the wall...

Where it stayed most of the time.

A Squier Jaguar, set up right, will always be a good guitar for the money.  That qualification matters, because every time I picked up a better guitar after the Jaguar, I was reminded that it would never be more than a good guitar for the money.

Time to sell.

Breaking a Cardinal Rule

I've always maintained that modifications to a guitar will yield no improvement to value over said guitar.  If you want to sell, strip the parts and sell separately. You'll make more money.

Except in this case.

You see, the changes I made to this guitar are pretty universally considered necessary - the mustang bridge makes the damn thing playable, and the tuners required slight reaming to install, meaning the old ones weren't going in.  This all added up to a guitar that was "stock" except for the parts that should have been better.

Listed at $450, I knew I might be asking too much given the new ones are running $519.99 plus tax, but I figured any less and I'd regret it.  Besides, this is a like-new condition Jaguar for less money than the shop, and oh by the way this one is actually playable.

I got a few silly offers, and finally got someone who seemed serious. He started off with the old "establish that you are negotiating from a position of strength" routine:

"It's $500 untouched and brand new. I'll offer you $380. I want the arctic white one with the red pickguard new. But if you'll go $380 I'll consider this guitar instead."

Hold the phone! You'll consider my guitar instead? M'Lord, you honour me with your consideration.

Also, fuck off?

First off, it isn't $500.  It's $519.99 plus tax (13%). That lands you closer to $600 than $500.  Second off, the white for this model is Olympic White, not Arctic.  It's a small thing, but this guy is trying to portray himself as "in the know".

Don't bring a knife to a tank fight, am I right?

I responded with:

I expect to not hear from him again.  Oh boy I was wrong. This has to be one of the funniest one-sided exchanges I've had in awhile. His last three messages occur over an hour, when I had left the phone somewhere out of sight and mind.

Great - he's ready to go.  The problem is it is late, and I'm ready for bed. I tell him it will have to be the next day, but that we should be able to make it work.

Fast forward a day, and my new friend is just about to come over, when...

At this point, I'm done, but there is a lesson here.  Don't negotiate against yourself.  Be certain of the asking price, and hold firm.  I've seen time and time again people negotiate against themselves because they lack patience and can't live with uncertainty.

It's a shame, because selling this was going to be the first step towards a Gretsch for me.

Oh well.  More patience required.