Why didn’t Leo Fender come up with a brand new shape for the Jaguar?

[Ceylon]

The Les Paul SG tho was intended as contoured, smaller bodied refinement on the Les Paul, which Les hated, and therefore it got the Les Paul name chopped off.

This may or may not be true, and it certainly isn't relevant to the thread, but I've read Lester asked Gibson not to have his name associated with the SG since that would lead to him getting some royalties, and Mary Ford getting half of those, and having just gone through a bad divorce Les didn't want Mary to get anything.

OK, back on topic.

[Mechanical Birds]

I dunno made way more sense than having to WELL ACTUALLY every wack point in the guy’s post. Was way more to the point and to be honest the best and most summarized version of how I thought I’d best be able to respond. I didn’t tell them never to come back or something, but that post contains a lot of inaccurate information and in these insane times, truth matters more than ever.

So TL;DR eat my ass there is no god do what you want and worship satan and do drugs only and not work

Fair enough i understand you didn’t mean to come across harsh. It just seemed a bit excessive considering the previous 5 posts had already called out the error.

All good mate. Back to the Jag...

Didn’t realize that until after I posted. For some reason I always start threads/read threads backwards

[Scout]

As we’re all guessing here I’ll venture that’s it’s evolution over revolution.

Tele, a bit frumpy—- Strat, contoured, sleeker—- jazzmaster, refined, balanced——jaguar, playability, solid, next step.

And that’s just the physical attributes, sonically it’s also tweeked as opposed to radically different.

[burntumber]

Bronco, Musicmaster, Dou sonic, Mustang.

all similar shapes with some differences

either aint broke, don't fix it

or making small adjustments to what already exist.



or he was just fucken lazy, idk.

[timtam]

Just guessing, but if the jazzmaster was the high end guitar 'designed' for jazz dudes, then there would also need to be a high end model for non-jazz players - hence the jag ? Also it was probably obvious by then that the jazzmaster was not being taken up by its target audience. So there may also have been an element of 're-badging' the design to salvage it ?

Also remember that music in the early 60s was different to what came later in the decade, so to some extent he was still anticipating what type of music particular electric guitars would be useful for. Musicians didn't really know either. Targeted advertising is very diverse - one guy in a suit and tie and one guy on a wave ! Nowadays we have a much better idea of what music different models are actually good for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_in_music

[Mechanical Birds]

I dunno I’ve seen conflicting reports on that. Typical reverb article or dad in a YouTube will say Jazzmasters tanked and were brought back in the late 90s by Kurt Cobain, but I’ve read in several much more detailed/academic settings that the Jazzmaster did gangbusters for those first few years. You gotta remember, when something is happening in real time, especially pre-Internet/highways/modern civilization, I don’t think it was a cut and dry JAZZMASTER RELEASED and then in 9 months they knew they had a dud. Seems more likely it wasn’t until more corporate sales adjustment practices came into play and were refined for a couple years before they realized that our favorite guitars were seen as a step below.

This thread is great and it’s interesting to see people take a shot but I was genuinely asking if there was any recorded history where Leo himself said anything about it. At this point in the thread I have to assume no, but like I said way earlier o haven’t seen a lot to disagree with and it seems like yeah, it was a pragmatic approach that won in the end. I mean, this site literally exists because a lot of people think the body shape was perfected so it’d be easy to see Leo coming to the same conclusion.

[Mechanical Birds]

Pretty sure those Music Man Things and early G&L were Offset even right?

[timtam]

I dunno I’ve seen conflicting reports on that. Typical reverb article or dad in a YouTube will say Jazzmasters tanked and were brought back in the late 90s by Kurt Cobain, but I’ve read in several much more detailed/academic settings that the Jazzmaster did gangbusters for those first few years. You gotta remember, when something is happening in real time, especially pre-Internet/highways/modern civilization, I don’t think it was a cut and dry JAZZMASTER RELEASED and then in 9 months they knew they had a dud. Seems more likely it wasn’t until more corporate sales adjustment practices came into play and were refined for a couple years before they realized that our favorite guitars were seen as a step below.

Unless someone unearths the old Fender accounts we'll probably never know for sure. But I associate the talk of the Jazzmaster's less than stellar early sales to reports like those of Tony Bacon, who interviewed a number of people who had been in Fender management/R&D then, while they were still alive (but not Leo on that issue ?).
"In fact, jazz guitarists found little appeal in this new, rather awkward solidbody guitar, and mainstream Fender fans largely stayed with their Strats and Teles. Bob Bogle in The Ventures played a Jazzmaster for a while in the early '60s, and a few surfers, including The Surfaris of "Wipe Out" fame, seemed to like the way you could switch from snap to smooth with the presets. The accomplished American instrumentalist Roy Lanham favored a Jazzmaster for a while, too, but at the time about the only full-on jazzers who indulged the new Fender were Joe Pass and the lesser-known Eddie Duran, although both proved to be brief flirtations. Jazzmen kept hold of their hollowbody electrics, and Fender had to come to terms with what must have seemed like its first misstep."
https://reverb.com/au/news/fender-goes- ... jazzmaster

Don Randall interviewed on the general development process ...
"At the starting of that guitar (the first electric), we had what we called the guinea pig process. A guitar would start out, and we'd put it in the hands of the player, and tell him to play it and tell us what he liked and didn't like about it. This would go, and the guy'd say, "This knob ought to be here, and this one here, this switch ought to be so-and-so," things of that nature.
Finally, after three or four guinea pigs, you'd come up with a composite of these various ideas, and it would pretty well satisfy most of the players. That's really the way the guitars happened—same with the Stratocaster, Jazzmaster, and so forth—they were just an offshoot or an improvement or a change of the ones that had gone before. Either a body change, or appearance, more pickups, a switching arrangement, just an outgrowth of whatever went before. So it wasn't a matter of inventing or anything like that—it was just development."
https://reverb.com/au/news/fenders-don- ... ns-archive

George Fullerton interviewed on 24" scale ...
"I asked George Fullerton, who worked at Fender from the earliest days, if he could recall a reason for the shorter scale on the Jag. "A lot of guitar players had smaller hands," he said, "and it was hard for them to reach those notes. Like Roy Lanham of the Sons Of The Pioneers: he always used a Jaguar because of its short neck." And Fender’s factory boss, Forrest White, liked this feature. "I have a Jaguar at home," he told me in an early ’90s interview, "and that was my favorite instrument because the scale was 24 inches, and I have small hands."
https://reverb.com/au/news/how-the-jagu ... l-for-1962

[mortron]

Pretty sure those Music Man Things and early G&L were Offset even right?

Yes they were. This thing is so sexy.



Just looking at the older ones from either brand gives me bad GAS... beware! Lol

Whether an answer comes from Leo's mouth or not on the Jaguar design choices... I think it's safe to agree that Leo knew what he was doing when it came to body designs, ya? They appeal to players all over the spectrum and are some of the most imitated. The majority of the bodies on his instruments still look great today.

IMO the Jazzmaster/Jaguar is probably one of his most enduring body designs and can fit in a lot of places. It's hard to top.

[BoringPostcards]

The G&L Skyhawk/Nighthawk/S500 1St version body, which was recently reissued, is gorgeous.

Leo and George knew how to design a comfortable and attractive body style.

[spook]

The difference is slight, but it is there:

Oh my god, I just had a complete flashback to 2008-era OSG after seeing this.

[Mechanical Birds]

Pretty sure those Music Man Things and early G&L were Offset even right?

Yes they were. This thing is so sexy.



Just looking at the older ones from either brand gives me bad GAS... beware! Lol

Whether an answer comes from Leo's mouth or not on the Jaguar design choices... I think it's safe to agree that Leo knew what he was doing when it came to body designs, ya? They appeal to players all over the spectrum and are some of the most imitated. The majority of the bodies on his instruments still look great today.

IMO the Jazzmaster/Jaguar is probably one of his most enduring body designs and can fit in a lot of places. It's hard to top.

Yeah, these guitars have always really done it for me

[BoringPostcards]

The difference is slight, but it is there:

Oh my god, I just had a complete flashback to 2008-era OSG after seeing this.

Same here. Those were good times. Now, I'm thinking about the old forum layout and wishing I had a screenshot of it.

[spook]

The difference is slight, but it is there:

Oh my god, I just had a complete flashback to 2008-era OSG after seeing this.

Same here. Those were good times. Now, I'm thinking about the old forum layout and wishing I had a screenshot of it.

Wait, do we still hate shortscale.org? Are they still around?

What was it they called us, "Amber switch-tip cork-sniffers"?

Good times indeed. Ben Hagerty greeting every newcomer without fail.

I think that era ended with the massive influx of new members when Lee Ranaldo's stolen mustang was found here.

[BoringPostcards]

Oh my god, I just had a complete flashback to 2008-era OSG after seeing this.

Same here. Those were good times. Now, I'm thinking about the old forum layout and wishing I had a screenshot of it.

Wait, do we still hate shortscale.org? Are they still around?

What was it they called us, "Amber switch-tip cork-sniffers"?

Good times indeed. Ben Hagerty greeting every newcomer without fail.

I think that era ended with the massive influx of new members when Lee Ranaldo's stolen mustang was found here.

Ben was cool. He was all about that tort and being friendly .

I remember the Lee Mustang thread. That was Sauerkraut, no?

I miss Orang Goreng/Zai. He was a cool cat, who just up and disappeared one day.