You’re not crazy – there are definitely more Fender Jazzmasters and Jaguars floating around than there used to be. But why the hell did those vintage offset guitars take off in popularity? Allen Abassi, Fender’s director of product, has a theory.
In an interview with Guitar World, Abassi thinks it all stems from vintage Fenders being more affordable and people originally buying stuff like the Jaguars and Jazzmasters because of budget reasons. And then y’know, it all snowballed from there.
“You know, it’s interesting because I think, up till now, we’ve seen a pretty steady increase in popularity of the offsets, and it doesn’t seem to be waning. Certain models, like Mustangs, usually wax and wane a little bit more than, say, Jazzmasters. For some reason, Jazzmasters seem to be the more popular offset.
“But we recently did the anniversary of the Jaguar and we did some anniversary models there. And in our new American Vintage series, we removed the Jaguar, and we heard some feedback about that, like, ‘Hey, where did the Jaguar go?’ So I think there’s been a very steady increase in popularity with the offsets and I have not seen that start to decrease at all.
“In the decades past, people started gravitating towards vintage offsets –because if you wanted an older Fender, they were way more affordable. And I think once people started doing that, they just discovered the beauty and the variety of tones you can get out of the offset instruments like the Jazzmaster and the Jaguar.
“And the more models we offered and the more artists that started using them, and the more songs that started to be recorded using offsets, it just increased people’s interest. And that’s just been steadily increasing and I don’t see it stopping right now at all.”
Now if we could only get more iterations of the Bass VI…
