Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by Marc » Tue May 08, 2018 6:58 am

I guess it was much easier to find in the US but here in the UK it was bloody hard to get an offset in the 80's!

What's your story?

When I decided I wanted a 'real Fender' (mid 80's - I had a lovely '57 Tokai Strat which I didn't realise at the time just how good they were!) there were not even Japanese reissues of Jags or Jazzmasters. It was vintage or nothing.... people hadn't even heard of them in the stores around Leicester (population around 300,000). I used to go into shops and ask if they knew of any Jazzmasters or Jaguars and I would get a strange look and then they might say "we had a Jazz Bass in about a month ago?" Without the internet, it was very difficult as a teenager to figure out where to go... I don't think the London vintage dealers occasionally advertised in guitar magazines were at all accessible to me and London may as well have been on a different continent! I lived around 100 miles away in the Midlands.

Finally, I found a '67 Jag in a store in Leicester. It had just come in and the owner (who bought it from new) had prior to taking it into the shop to trade done the unthinkable and stripped the original Olympic White finish from the body and (matching) headstock and repainted it with rattle can white because he thought it was too tatty and no one would buy it! The store wanted £290 for it and I passed on it. I knew it was horrible and luthiers that I had spoken to about getting one universally hated them (through lack of understanding).

The next time I saw one in a store was around '84. It was a brand new Jazzmaster - terrible setup but I thought it was brilliant. It was £450. I'm pretty certain it was that final batch they did from left-over parts in 1982 as it was Sunburst over ash (I remember very pronounced wood grain and it was very heavy). It had a black pickguard, black Strat knobs and possibly black pickup covers. Also had the huge blocky late 70's decal. I remember the guy in the shop said it had been there over a year. He hated it and couldn't disguise it. I had no chance of getting £450 so that was the end of it.

Finally, I got a '66 Jaguar through pure chance - a 'friend of a friend' heard me talking about wanting either a Jag or a Jazzmaster and just said he had one! It had badly worn frets, stripped to wood and had the Ronseal varnish treatment. The other thing was a route under the pickguard and a huge metal switch fitted on the pickguard that was connected to... nothing! It was the kind of switch you get as a standby on a Fender amp and I am pretty sure it was for 'looks'!! Mad! It came with one of the Arbiter 'import' form fit cases that some Fender in the UK had - don't know why some didn't get the 'proper' case. Years later I got a '65 Tele with the same type of case.

Luckily the guy was going traveling and after a bit of pressure, he agreed to sell it to me. I was one happy camper because it cost me £190 and let me pay in installments!

It wasn't really playable and again I got lucky and found a repair guy - Tom Sheehan who knew/liked Jags and understood about shimming the neck etc. He stoned what was left of the frets, sorted the wiring out and made it very playable and said he strongly recommended a restoration on it.

A few months later I took it back to him and he refretted it, rewired it correctly, refinished it in Sonic Blue (it had a white original pickguard so I don't think it was originally sunburst). It cost more than what I paid for the guitar - £250 but he did an amazing job.

So that's how I got my first offset back in the dark ages in the UK. I kept it for a couple of years until I moved to Bristol and traded it in for '65 Candy Apple Red Jaguar with green nitrate pickguard. I got £250 trade in and paid £200 on top. This was 1987 - unbelievable it was possible to get a Pre CBS spec Jag in custom colour for £450. It was an amazing guitar which I kept for years and is my biggest musical regret that I sold it. Serial number is L72224 and was very worn finish... if anyone ever sees it give me a shout!

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Tue May 08, 2018 7:30 am

I think I bought my '59 Jazzmaster in 1991.

Kinda crazy, looking back, because it was actually hung in the window of a guitar shop - Don Audio - situated well out of town. It just so happened that I lived locally. I walked in with a Honda III and walked out with the Jazzmaster, having also paid £150 in cash.
The neck was from a Squier Strat & had been heat damaged around the headstock. The story went that it was one of a bunch of guitars pulled out of Northern Guitar Centre as the building was burning to the ground.
The previous owner had painted it black & it had a 3-ply black pickguard. The tuners were Grovers & the collet was missing from the trem plate. An arm still came with it though. Also, it wasn't working so I had to get a friend to rewire it.

My friend ripped out all the "crappy old cloth wire" and used "better" plastic-coated stuff. Yep! Facepalm!! He also pointed out that one pickup was different to the other. One was grey, one was black. I've since worked out that one pickup is from '63, the other's a '59. All other electrics are stock.

I eventually got it re-finned properly and bought a '59 neck, a tort guard, a set of single-line Klusons & a repro collet. I guess in all I've put £1000 into it, fixing it up. I've no idea what it's worth nowadays.
Last edited by PorkyPrimeCut on Tue May 08, 2018 7:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by aliendawg » Tue May 08, 2018 7:39 am

Man... I can't imagine life without internet! Those are cool stories! I'll be following this thread for more
"With the resurgence of offsets it seems like we're also seeing a resurgence of people who don't know what to do with them" - 601210

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by Marc » Tue May 08, 2018 8:09 am

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 7:30 am
I think I bought my '59 Jazzmaster in 1991.

Kinda crazy, looking back, because it was actually hung in the window of a guitar shop - Don Audio - situated well out of town. It just so happened that I lived locally. I walked in with a Honda III and walked out with the Jazzmaster, having also paid £150 in cash.
The neck was from a Squier Strat & had been heat damaged around the headstock. The story went that it was one of a bunch of guitars pulled out of Northern Guitar Centre as the building was burning to the ground.
The previous owner had painted it black & it had a 3-ply black pickguard. The tuners were Grovers & the collet was missing from the trem plate. An arm still came with it though. Also, it wasn't working so I had to get a friend to rewire it.

My friend ripped out all the "crappy old cloth wire" and used "better" plastic-coated stuff. Yep! Facepalm!! He also pointed out that one pickup was different to the other. One was grey, one was black. I've since worked out that one pickup is from '63, the other's a '59. All other electrics are stock.

I eventually got it re-finned properly and bought a '59 neck, a set of single-line Klusons & a retro collet. I guess in all I've put £1000 into it, fixing it up. I've no idea what it's worth nowadays.
Hi there PrimeCut! That's a cool story. It goes without saying the value of your '59 is way more than the money you put into it. Would like to see pics (I don't have any of the '66 sadly. The grey bobbin pickup might be actually earlier specs but just happens to be on grey fibreboard. I thought they started the grey bobbin winding specs a little later some time in 64. If it is indeed the later specs it's a nice combination as you have the darker black bobbin specs sound with the later pickup variation which are quite different sounding from my experience. I owned a mid-64 Jazzmaster for several years that had (original and dated) black bobbin pups and I put a set of late '64 grey bobbin pickups that I paid a small fortune for. I much preferred the sound of the grey spec pickups. I put the old ones back in when I sold it.

It's great when you come across a guitar with a story that needs genuine restoration. It was on the whole pretty sad when the 'parting out' boom happened in the early 2000's from a small core of traders who broke up fine instruments that occasionally were not even refins. At least, at the end of the day, they ended up being used again as complete instruments. It seems that whole parting out industry is dead now - it certainly is sparse on eBay and doesn't seem to have migrated over to Reverb in the volume that was on eBay. One can only assume that the refinished guitars simply dried up and was difficult to source them. Also, the cost of refinished offsets has risen to a point that it is difficult to justify the asking prices that would be needed to part them out and make a worthwhile profit.

I no longer own a vintage offset (I had a bunch of them and two '65 Teles but sold everything when I got divorced 10 years ago and landed well and truly on my arse right at the start financial crash - I couldn't have timed it any better!). Having said all the above I have noticed that prices are beginning to soften a little - it's certainly taking people a long time to sell instruments and get their money back on them. There is a really sweet '63 JM on UK eBay for about £4.7k that has been advertised for several weeks and hasn't sold. So, if things carry on the way they are I might get lucky and be able to get something.

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by thedude99 » Tue May 08, 2018 8:18 am

For sure.

In the 90’s, I barely saw them anywhere. I saw one vintage Jazzmaster at a local store (‘62, all original sunburst) for around $1200 CAD. That’s the only time I recall seeing one in a shop for years.

I had to place a special order for my CIJ Jazzmaster and wait for a month or two for it to show up.

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by thedude99 » Tue May 08, 2018 8:24 am

Luiz Spindola wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 7:39 am
Man... I can't imagine life without internet! Those are cool stories! I'll be following this thread for more
One of the upsides was there was nobody bombarding you with preconceived (often parroted opinions).

I played with the original bridge and 10’s for years before the internet told me that wasn’t possible :)

I’m not implying that works for everyone, or can’t be improved, but just an observation from the pre-Internet everywhere days. You’d form your own opinions on stuff like that based on personal experience- not what you read online.

There were plenty of downsides though. Like nobody having a clue how to setup an offset properly and no places like this to learn how to do it yourself

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by Embenny » Tue May 08, 2018 10:16 am

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 7:30 am
I eventually got it re-finned properly and bought a '59 neck, a tort guard, a set of single-line Klusons & a repro collet. I guess in all I've put £1000 into it, fixing it up. I've no idea what it's worth nowadays.
I'll give you your £1000 back for it if you want to cash out and cut your losses now ;)
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Tue May 08, 2018 11:30 am

Marc wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 8:09 am
The grey bobbin pickup might be actually earlier specs but just happens to be on grey fibreboard. I thought they started the grey bobbin winding specs a little later some time in 64. If it is indeed the later specs it's a nice combination as you have the darker black bobbin specs sound with the later pickup variation which are quite different sounding from my experience.
I can't remember the date to be honest. It's written in marker pen on the grey bobbin. I thought it was '63 but maybe it was later.

I learned all this info when I first signed up to the forum, doing my research before I accidentally messed the guitar up even more. It's amazing how much info I learned & also how much of it I seem to have completely forgotten!! ;D
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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Tue May 08, 2018 11:32 am

mbene085 wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 10:16 am
PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
Tue May 08, 2018 7:30 am
I eventually got it re-finned properly and bought a '59 neck, a tort guard, a set of single-line Klusons & a repro collet. I guess in all I've put £1000 into it, fixing it up. I've no idea what it's worth nowadays.
I'll give you your £1000 back for it if you want to cash out and cut your losses now ;)
Thank you, kind sir. I'll think about it.
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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by jeff m. » Tue May 08, 2018 12:23 pm

Great subject for a thread, Marc !
My 'Aussie' perspective is that in the early '80s, offsets were around..IF you wanted one ( and it was a big 'IF' ) ! None of my guitar playing friends had any interest in them, & the vintage guitar stores around Sydney that had an example or two in stock kinda treated them as 'by-product', like something to fill the spaces between the vintage Strats & Teles.. (actually, vintage Telecasters weren't really all that popular at the time, either..it was kinda Strats & Les Pauls all the way).

My first Jag was a black re-fin '63 that I got in trade for a '67 Gretsch Clipper, which was the 'cheap & cheery' bottom-of-the-line Gretsch hollowbody, but was still perceived to be worth more than the Jag. Couldn't get on with the 'A'-neck (funny, 'cos I like A necks now), sold it privately for around $650, which was kinda top dollar outside of vintage guitar shops.

Next was a sunburst B & B '68 that I picked up for $450 from a local classifieds ad..didn't bond with it at all, & sold it on, again for around $600 (this was now c.1984)..that was still around the going price among private sellers.

Of course, I recall some absolute beauties in 'legit' guitar stores that I paid scant attention too, as they were 'overpriced' at $900-1100 :whistle: ..that's just the way it was then ! Until someone invents the Time Machine, prices like that are only memories, & memories they'll remain !

Cheers,
Jeff.

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by debudavid » Tue May 08, 2018 3:59 pm

Back in 1992, I was living in Brisbane Australia and I had I just started playing in a band. Vintage Fender offsets were few and far between let alone affordable. The first mustang I ever saw was at a Custard gig in Brisbane that year. And I'm not kidding but the first jaguars and jazzmasters I saw in the flesh was at a My Bloody Valentine gig the year before in November 1991. I used to scour guitar magazines and music papers such as the NME and Melody Maker just to find pictures of them. I nearly bought a jass bass copy and thought of modifying it to look like a jazzmaster. Anyway, I contacted the Fender Australia head office by phone and kept pestering them for weeks until they said they were going to bring a small batch of Japanese jazzmasters in that year, but no jaguars. I went to the local Fender dealer and they repeatedly said they couldn't get them at all until I made them call the Fender office in front of me. They told me they could only get sunburst and the retail price was going to be AUD$1600 and it would take a few months. Of course I wanted a vintage offset but they were out of my price league and I couldn't afford paying such a large amount at one time (at thetime in the Sydney shops such as Jackson's Rare Guitars, vintage jags were going for AUD$1500 and up, jazzmasters started around AUD$2500 and up) so putting a MIJ on layby that I could pay off over several months seemed good to me. I then put a deposit on it and waited, and waited, and waited. After eight or nine months of waiting, I bought my first offset which was a Japanese Guyatone LG23. I then gave up on waiting for the jazzmaster in disgust and decided to cancel the order. The shop said I would forfeit 20% of the deposit which was about $800 but one of the senior sales staff said I could switch the money over to buy a Roland Jupiter 6 he was selling on the sly. I bought it and enjoyed it a lot and because of this, I stopped playing guitar and the original premise of the band changed from guitars over to synth. Consequently my music making life changed. In 1994, I came back to guitars and bought a '63 Duosonic sight unseen with no pictures to look at from a Jackson's Rare Guitar catalogue. And I'm pretty sure the Japanese jazzmasters didn't arrive in Brisbane until 1996! So yes, buying an offset back then was pretty difficult I'd say. :(

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by debudavid » Tue May 08, 2018 4:39 pm

Correction : The Guyatone LG23 is not an offset. It's just a strat body with a jag temelo. My first offset was the Duosonic.

A couple of pawn shops in Stones Corner had some old bizarre Japanese offsets which had all the funky switches etc. We never bought any of those but I wish we had. Of course offsets were being sold for cheaper prices privately but I didn't see any and in the circles I travelled none came up. Some of the local indie bands around '92 such as Budd and The Melniks had mustangs but Custard had a nice blue competition one. A Suede ripoff band named Cinnaman we knew in 1993 had a vintage CAR jag which his doctor dad bought for him. In 1994, my new girlfriend's brother had a 1986 MIJ jaguar which had bought from a guy who modified it to resemble a strat with three lace sensors installed. My friends and I used to scour all the music stores, new and used, looking for old synths and sometimes we would find a jaguar or two. Never a jazzmaster, duosonic, bronco, or musicmaster. The very first B&B jag I ever saw was Musician's Pro Shop in the valley in 1995 which went for AUD$1250. Once a vintage guitar show was held in 1995 in Brisbane which had about 100-150 guitars all lined up in one room. There was only one vintage offset. A refinshed jaguar in fiesta red which was AUD$2500. By 1997, I had left for Japan. The first thing I wanted to buy when I arrived was a MIJ bass VI which I have still not bought!

That was my experiences or lack of with offsets in Brisbane.

Here's my collection of Jackson's Rare Guitars and Guitar Emporium catalogues from 1993 to 1996.

Image

Here's a page from a March/April 1993 catalogue.

Imagehow to screenshot on windows 7

Here' s where my Duosonic was listed.

Image

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by timtam » Tue May 08, 2018 7:30 pm

We knew just enough to be a tad ahead of the boom here in Melbourne. Rowland Howard played a jag in the Boys Next Door/Birthday Party, and we loved Television and pre-80's Cure. My best friend and I hated strats and sunburst with a passion - basically anything that reaked of mainstream music. And we couldn't afford mainstream guitars anyway. So in 1980 I went along with my friend to evaluate the L-series (1964?) dacota red jag (red headstock too) he wanted to buy.

The jag was advertised in the Trading Post used goods newspaper (pre-ebay) for AUD$300 (about US$275 in those days). I don't remember offsets being really hard to find (I guess they were; on the other hand few people wanted them then) - but definitely hard to find at that price. My friend had a job so he could afford it; I was still at uni. The seller picked us up at the local train station out in the sticks and drove us up into the hills to his remote cabin. I was a little concerned for our safety. I didn't know much about evaluating guitars except how to tell a straight neck. The jag looked good to me but the finish was a bit beaten up - 'road worn' wasn't really a (good) thing in those days ! Pretty sure it was dacota red - it was too dark for fiesta and wasn't CAR either. Pickguard was white or mint green IIRC. Pretty sure all original. Anyway my friend bought it and the guy drove us back to the station. We were glad to be out of there. He later had it refinished in metallic red - really well done, but in hindsight took a big whack off what its value would be now. I haven't seen my friend for some years and I don't know what happened to the jag.
"I just knew I wanted to make a sound that was the complete opposite of a Les Paul, and that’s pretty much a Jaguar." Rowland S. Howard.

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by dylanafghjkl » Wed May 09, 2018 3:34 am

All the Australian stories are super interesting to me especially. Being in my 20s all I've seen is a bunch of reruns of countdown and I assumed it was pretty easy to get offsets in the 80s because it looked like a lot of the local bands were playing jags (I'd guess because of Rowland S Howard) and almost every second band played mustang basses which I find interesting because I see relatively few of them around Melbourne at the moment (compared to other basses).

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Re: Does anyone remember how hard it was to buy an offset before the 'offset boom'?

Post by Marc » Thu May 10, 2018 8:07 am

dylanafghjkl wrote:
Wed May 09, 2018 3:34 am
All the Australian stories are super interesting to me especially. Being in my 20s all I've seen is a bunch of reruns of countdown and I assumed it was pretty easy to get offsets in the 80s because it looked like a lot of the local bands were playing jags (I'd guess because of Rowland S Howard) and almost every second band played mustang basses which I find interesting because I see relatively few of them around Melbourne at the moment (compared to other basses).
You know I think it's safe to assume that offsets were more popular in Oz than in the UK back in the day. The reason being as Dylan mentions they seem to be in the hands of 'alt' and local bands in some numbers during the 80's... in other words when they've been passed from original 1960s owners onto the second-hand market before they were vintage.

From the UK I'd noticed a lot of Ozzie bands playing offsets in the 80's - Birthday Party, Triffids, Australian Crawl and some other band that looked like Duran Duran who I forget.... pretty certain the offset to Strat/Tele ratio was higher than the UK.

So why the drought in the 80's? My theory is guitars remain with the first owner for some years and if a person stops playing due to losing interest it goes under the bed for years THEN goes on the market. Just a hunch.

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