Jay Turser Tobacco Sunburst

25.5            Scale Length

42mm        Nut - Plastic

S.S.S.         Pickup Configuration

6 lbs.          Weight

22               Frets

Sunburst   Color

1.5 mm      Action at 12th Fret

12              Fretboard Radius

Right Handed

X     Deep Cleaning

X     Electronics Cleaned / Tested

X     Tuners Serviced

X     Fretboard Cleaned / Rehydrated

X     Setup Completed

X     Intonation Adjusted

X     Neck Adjusted

Copper shielding in the body cavity.

A Fictional History — Mobile, Alabama, circa 2006

When this guitar arrived at my shop in Michigan from the Mobile, Alabama area in January 2024, it already carried a story in its finish.

The guitar appears to be a Jay Turser JT-300, a full-size Strat-style electric that was being produced during the period when affordable imported instruments were putting real electric guitars within reach of young players who couldn't afford a Fender. The JT-300 family dates to roughly the mid-2000s, making circa 2006 a reasonable setting for the story I imagine for this guitar.

The wear around the neck joint suggests years of handling and playing, while the remarkable cleanliness of the rest of the instrument suggests that for most of its life it was cared for. Then there is another kind of damage altogether: a long, rough scratch across the back, several sharp-edged chips around one side of the body, and damage extending from the neck-pocket area toward the neck pickup cavity. Unlike the gradual wear of playing, those marks appear concentrated enough to inspire the idea of a single bad moment late in the guitar's life.

So this is the story I imagine.

Mobile, Alabama. 2006.

A 17-year-old high-school student wants an electric guitar badly enough to work for it.

Two years earlier, Guitar Center had opened its Mobile store. The walls were filled with guitars that were mostly outside a teenager's budget, but among the affordable instruments of the era was the Jay Turser JT-300—a simple three-single-coil, sunburst Strat-style guitar that gave a young player much of the look and feel he wanted without the Fender price.

At the time, a guitar in this class could reasonably have represented around $120–$150, while the federal minimum wage was only $5.15 an hour.

So he washed dishes.

He bussed tables.

Maybe he came home smelling like dishwater and fryer grease, counted what he could put aside from another week's pay, and watched the amount slowly climb.

After months of working and saving, the sunburst Jay Turser finally came home with him.

And he played it.

The guitar wasn't valuable in the collector's sense. It didn't have to be. It was valuable because he had earned it.

Years passed. Eventually another guitar took its place. The Jay Turser—the guitar of his teenage years—was put away. Not discarded, just stored. Life moved forward, and the guitar waited.

Then life took one of the turns nobody plans for.

By 2023, the storage locker containing those older belongings had fallen behind and eventually went to auction. The teenager who had once worked restaurant shifts for his first electric guitar would have been about 34 or 35 years old.

The locker changed hands.

Among everything inside was an old sunburst guitar.

In the excitement of clearing the unit, somebody grabbed it and pulled before everything around it was clear. The guitar caught. A harder tug followed, combined with a twist and poor leverage. Something dragged across the back, leaving the long scratch that remains today. Another movement loaded the neck and body in the wrong direction. When the guitar finally came free, momentum carried it into something else in the locker.

Three hard chips appeared along the edge.

For perhaps the first time in nearly two decades, nobody handling the guitar particularly cared what happened to it.

A few weeks later the storage-unit buyer tried turning the guitar into quick cash at a pawn shop. The buyer behind the counter noticed the damage around the neck pocket and used it exactly as a pawn-shop buyer would—as leverage.

"Cracked neck. Hard to sell. I can't give you much for it."

Maybe the offer was five dollars. Maybe twenty. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough.

So instead of taking almost nothing, the locker buyer put the guitar in with the other unwanted property being donated to Goodwill. There was at least a donation receipt involved, and somebody else could deal with the damaged guitar.

Eventually it entered Goodwill's online auction system in Mobile.

And in January 2024, nearly eighteen years after the fictional 17-year-old dishwasher finally earned enough money to buy his first guitar, I placed the winning bid.

The Jay Turser left Alabama.

It arrived at Back From the Dead Guitars in Michigan carrying the playing wear from the person who once wanted it, the scars from the moment when someone else didn't, and absolutely no idea that its useful life wasn't over.

The first chapter is fictional.

The damage isn't. The trip from Mobile to Michigan isn't. And neither is what happens next.

Now the guitar begins its second life—restored and waiting for another player to care about it as much as I imagine that first young owner once did.

The guitar arrived with a long scratch on the back and three chips on the right side. The finish around the neck/body join presented as what a natural relic finish should look like. The guitar was very clean and the tuners and pickups worked fine. It was set up for intonation for its prior location and the action was around 1.75mm to 1.9mm. The frets had the classic dullness from not being played for a long time but a test buffing showed they would polish up well. It arrived with no tremolo arm so I could not test stability of tune when used but the bridge was slightly floated so it seems to have been set up to use with a little give in the up position. All the pickups worked and there was not static or cutout in the switch. The volume and tone knobs did not stick and had a surprisingly good tension to them when turned. 

I removed the strings and took all the parts off for deep cleaning and took off the pickguard to inspect the electronics. The first thing that jumped out was the good routing done in the manufacturing and the body. The next thing that jumped out was the crack on the top of the body from the neck pocket to the neck pickup routing. While not an issue other than cosmetic and easily stabilized with super glue it is present. With the placement of the recent scratches on the body on one side and the chips on the other the crack was most likely done by someone twisting the neck while the body was stuck between non moving objects while lifting violently and not from a drop. 

The Pickups are ceramic and the pots are dime sized with no manufacturing marks on them. The switch is the standard import circuit board type. The wiring however is not the typical one capacitor setup as this guitar has both tone pots with capacitors so roll offs will benefit greatly from that. 

Overall this guitar is well built for entry level and the little extra in the wiring shows that it was spec'd to give the player the best possible tonal experience for the price point it targeted. 

Condition, Originality & Intended Buyer

Hidden beneath the pickguard is a crack in the top of the body extending from the neck-pickup routing toward the neck pocket. The crack has been stabilized with a small amount of CA glue, with no attempt made to cosmetically conceal it. Based on inspection, it does not appear to compromise the guitar's structural stability, safety, setup, or playability. It is nevertheless real damage and should be considered when purchasing the instrument.

The guitar also carries a long, rough scratch across the back and several chipped areas on the opposite side of the body. The location and character of this damage suggest a single episode of unusually rough handling—something more consistent with the guitar being caught, pulled or twisted free from where it was stored than with normal playing wear.

I have intentionally left these scars visible rather than attempting to make the guitar appear to be something it is not.

The guitar remains remarkably original. The pickups, controls, switch, bridge, tuners and other hardware appear to be the original components, including the original plastic nut. All installed components are presently functional.

The original tremolo arm is missing. The bridge itself remains functional, but full tremolo operation will require the buyer to locate a compatible replacement arm. Alternatively, the bridge can easily be blocked for players who prefer a fixed-bridge setup.

Body and Neck

The important foundation of this guitar remains very good.

The neck is solid, the body is solid apart from the stabilized area described above, and the neck/body geometry provides an excellent starting platform for someone interested in modifying a Strat-style guitar.

That makes this guitar especially well suited to two kinds of buyers.

It could become a modification platform for someone who already has particular pickups, electronics, tuners or other components in mind and would rather start with an older, well-constructed body and neck than pay for parts they intend to replace.

Or it could simply remain what it is: a very usable garage, backyard, rehearsal or casual jam guitar. Its existing scars mean the next bump doesn't have to become a tragedy. Take it somewhere, play it, lean it against an amp, and worry more about the music than preserving a flawless finish.

Electronics and Shielding

The factory electronics remain intact, including the somewhat unusual original grounding arrangement that also grounds the selector-switch chassis.

I added copper shielding to the body cavities to complement the factory grounding and shielding provisions. This can help reduce environmental electrical and radio-frequency interference. As with any traditional three-single-coil Strat-style guitar, however, normal single-coil hum can still be present.

Finish

In addition to the obvious scratch and chips, there are several shallow impressions visible in the front finish. Their appearance is more consistent with prolonged pressure during storage than with impact or normal playing damage.

Again, they have been left as found.

Value

This is admittedly an unusual guitar to price.

The stabilized body damage prevents it from commanding the price of an equivalent clean example, and I have priced it with that limitation in mind.

What it does offer is an older Jay Turser Strat-style instrument with its original hardware and electronics, good underlying body and neck construction, years of proven stability, and enough remaining quality to make it worth preserving rather than parting out.

Jay Turser is neither a prestigious collector's name nor an anonymous no-name import. It occupies an interesting middle ground: recognizable to many guitar players, affordable, and increasingly representative of a period when Asian manufacturers were learning to produce surprisingly competent instruments at very low prices.

For the right buyer, the imperfections are the reason this guitar becomes affordable rather than the reason it should be discarded.