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Fender’s Offsets: From Lo-fi Laughing Stock To Hi-cred Classics?

Serious guitarists gather on street corners to point and sneer at Jazzmasters, Jaguars and the other ‘offset waist’ Fenders. Or at least, they used to...

Thursday, 25. April 2013 - by Richard Purvis

: 1972 Fender Jaguar - Photo Credit Maury McCown

Yes, we know, Fender got it right the first time – and they didn’t exactly balls it up the second time. The Telecaster and Stratocaster are the timeless wonders that made the electric guitar more than just a ’50s fad, and no six-string they’ve come up with since has had anything like the same impact.

But while it’s long been easy for those outside the indie/grunge ghetto to dismiss Fender’s offset models as zero-sustain strummers that only cut it when hidden behind a curtain of fuzz, it seems they’re beginning to be recognised for more than just their underdog hipness. Fender have recently released new US-made Jazzmaster and Jaguar models for the first time in decades, plus two signature Jags courtesy of Kurt Cobain and Johnny Marr – not to mention a host of offset-influenced models in the Pawn Shop line.

This might be just another example of a big corporation responding to alternative culture’s slide into the mainstream – or it might, perhaps, be about great sounds being recognised at last. Are the offsets finally ready to shuffle up to the spotlight?

When Fender launched the Jazzmaster in 1958, it was priced more expensively than the Strat and marketed as the company’s luxury model. The fiddly switches and elaborate bridge/vibrato design were supposed to be selling points for sophisticated jazz players with shiny hair and big glasses. The shorter-scale Jaguar followed four years later, and the Mustang (plus the short-lived Electric XII) a little after that.

They were all, more or less, failures. The Jaguar was extinct by 1975 and the other two didn’t survive long into the ’80s. Now they really were pawn-shop guitars – which was precisely what made them so appealing to post-punk players who had no interest in divebombing, tapping or putting cucumbers down their trousers. And now that the likes of J Mascis, Thurston Moore, Kevin Shields and the late Cobain have reached their own kind of icon status, it may just be that the next generation of players is looking at the offset models in a new way.

: Photo Credit Serena

The only problem is, the reasons these guitars never caught on in the first place were not just about fiddly switches – they were about tone. Fashion is one thing, but if they don’t sound as good as Teles or Strats then who needs ’em?

Well, that’s where the arguments begin. Offsets have a sweetness all their own but they can sound a little scratchy, and in standard spec they’re generally not big sustainers – so for a certain kind of ‘traditional’ rock playing they’re never going to be the tonehound’s axe of choice.

This is mostly down to the combination of a pivoting bridge and a shallow string-break angle over the saddles: a recipe for dismally inefficient transfer of vibrations between strings and body. And when those saddles are threaded instead of notched, making the strings prone to popping out of position at the lightest strum, it’s easy to see why so many people have leapt straight back into the arms of the low-maintenance Tele. The vibrato arm is only good for a semitone or so, and can sometimes cause the bridge to get stuck in mid-pivot. Oh, and don’t forget the problem of the strings resonating annoyingly behind the bridge when you’re trying not to play…

The other thing that made it hard for the offset models to bounce back to prominence before now is that, despite the appearance of occasional new models like the Jag-Stang and Cyclone, they were never modernised like Fender’s other guitars. Until recently, if you wanted a Jazzmaster, you were pretty much stuck with one kind of pickup, one kind of bridge (see above) and one fretboard radius – a tight one that turns string-bending with a low action into a festival of choking-out.

: Photo Credit Ben Hollingsworth

The great news for those of us who like the look and the characterful tone of a good offset is that most of these issues have now been resolved. In 2013 the Fender and Squier ranges include various offsets with beefier pickups, flatter fretboards and even non-pivoting bridges. Short of a Floyd Rose and an extra-pointy headstock, there aren’t many options left uncovered.

It’s also easier than ever to make an old instrument behave more reliably and sound less ‘plinky’ if you really want it to, with accessories such as Graph Tech’s excellent String Saver saddles, the highly-rated (and even more highly-priced) Mastery Bridge and the now-familiar Buzz Stop. Plus there are a lot more aftermarket pickups to choose from than there used to be – Seymour Duncan alone makes five different Jazzmaster pups now.

This might well be the perfect time to give one of these ‘flops’ another try. They still don’t sound exactly like Strats or Teles, of course, but what a dreary world this would be if they did.

Sounds

How does an offset’s basic clean tone compare with that of a Tele? These are short samples of a Telecaster, a Jazzmaster and a Jaguar all playing the same riff, first on the bridge pickup and then switching to the middle position. Amp settings are the same, and all three instruments are US-made Fenders with alder bodies and rosewood boards.