THE RISE, FALL & RISE OF THE OFFSET
Fender’s Jazzmaster, which made its debut in 1958, and its shorter-scale sibling the Jaguar, launched four years later, failed to surpass the popularit y and utilit y of the Strat and Tele that went before them. Only now, over 60 years on, is the offset-body electric truly becoming recog nised as a guitar for all players. We trace the offset’s long journey from misunderstood outsider to contemporary king
Nobody disputes the fact that the Jazzmaster was designed for jazz guitarists, so it’s hard to understand why Leo Fender imagined all those ‘one tone for everything ’ archtop huggers would be drawn to complex control layouts and a floating vibrato mounted on a plank. And if anything, the Jaguar is an even more baffling proposition. Like so many of Leo Fender’s products, these instruments ended up being wildly successful at producing sounds that ran contrary to his intentions and that would not have met his approval. That’s why, first of all, we’re going to take a deep dive into the radical design features, ingenious hardware and innovative electronics that make Fender’s finest offsets more popular than ever and continue to inspire guitar players and builders alike.
Offset Bodies
The Jazzmaster and Jaguar body shape represents a significant departure from conventional guitar design. Guitar bodies had traditionally been symmetrical – cutaways notwithstanding – but the offset waist was introduced for ergonomic reasons and the term ‘offset’ is now generally applied to most asymmetrical guitars.
Observing how jazz players performed, Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares set out to design a guitar that would feel more comfortable in a seated position. As Leo explained to author Tom Wheeler in American Guitars: An Illustrated History: “Normally, the player is forced to hold the guitar at an angle to play it because it’s not balanced. So it was a matter of fitting it to the ribcage. The offset waist […] went right along with the idea of the dressed away portion in the back. It was just a matter of function.”
The body was larger and generally heavier than Tele and
Guitarist would like to express sincere thanks to Martin and Paul Kelly, authors of Fender: The Golden Age 1946-1970, Phil Hylander of the Seven Decades collection, and Gas Station Guitars in Taunton for access to the fabulous vintage and collectible offset instruments in this month’s issue
