Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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JPCordingley
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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by JPCordingley » Mon Mar 28, 2016 5:02 pm

Really like the look of that guitar! I bet Kurt Cobain would be kicking himself right now for designing the Jag-Stang the wrong way round! This is totally how it should have been done! The TOM to me just makes it easier to fit a roller bridge.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by Supreme Pancake » Tue Mar 29, 2016 12:59 am

I like the color choice, but something just isn't right about the body.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by spaceritual » Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:18 am

JPCordingley wrote:Really like the look of that guitar! I bet Kurt Cobain would be kicking himself right now for designing the Jag-Stang the wrong way round! This is totally how it should have been done! The TOM to me just makes it easier to fit a roller bridge.
The Jagstang is a mess!

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by mikeyjames56 » Tue Mar 29, 2016 5:16 am

Kurt's Jagstang from his journals is cool, Fender's interpretation is...well, not as nice.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by GhostPlayer » Tue Mar 29, 2016 5:18 am

Definitely not for me. Body looks weird and I'm more into singles on bridge and humbys on neck.
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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by JPCordingley » Fri Apr 01, 2016 4:40 am

mikeyjames56 wrote:Kurt's Jagstang from his journals is cool, Fender's interpretation is...well, not as nice.
I agree with you there. My housemate has a Jagstang and it is still a very nice guitar and I do kind of dig the wackiness of the looks. She also plays like a dream despite the abuse she's been put through. But if I were designing a Jaguar-Mustang hybrid I think this Cribs model would be what I'd end up with.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by JPCordingley » Fri Apr 01, 2016 4:42 am

GhostPlayer wrote:Definitely not for me. Body looks weird and I'm more into singles on bridge and humbys on neck.
You're on an Offset guitar forum - weird is what it's all about!

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by Jarman » Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:01 am

I actually designed one of the guitars, and was sent a link to this site by a friend a few weeks back when the (surprise) NAMM show teasers came out.

It's cool to see that a lot of you seem to be digging the guitars - thanks a lot, and glad that you like them.
Me and my brothers have been Fender fans since we first started playing guitar in the early 90's, and always had a deep fascination with the weird and rare 'oddball' Fenders. When the band first started in 2001 we used Mustangs and Mustang basses pretty much exclusively, and had the odd Jaguar here and there in our teens.

Fender offered the band an endorsement deal in 2005, and we quickly gained a reputation for really bending Neil and Justins ears about all the obscure old stuff, and Squier Vistas etc. We would always ask them about re-issuing some of that stuff, and quizzing Fender about rare old shapes. We were actually privvy to some of the early discussions regarding the Squier Bass VI, and some of the Pawnshop stuff like the Marauder's comeback.
Eventually, after our show at Reading 2012, we were invited by Neil at Fender UK and Justin in California to design a couple of new offsets for Fender as an experiment, as we seemed to them to have a geeky amount of knowledge of those type of guitars that I guess they were interested and curious to see what we came up with after years of obsession.

To cut a long story short, the guitars were conceptualized almost 4 years ago and mocked up roughly by us using photoshop and also traditional line drawings. They were then sent to Neil and Justin and digitally rendered professionally by Fender in California, before being sent to R&D where every practical element of the concepts were tested to make sure that they would work in actuality. We worked with the Fender USA guys for the most part, before the plans were sent to their factory in Asia to be created and assembled. Every facet was pretty painstaking to be honest, so for the people that are mentioning what they perceive to be flaws, or which they think require more work or whatever, this isn't the case. It's just a matter of taste I guess. The amount of different drawings, measurements, and contouring was huge and as I mentioned have taken almost 4 years. The Fender USA guys put a lot of time and thought into the process, even though the designs that we originally mocked up were stuck to pretty closely. We then received a couple of different prototypes and made changes and tweaks accordingly.

Now onto the guitars themselves - The Mus-uar was put together by combining the Mustang (Ryans favourite guitar) with the Jaguars that he has always liked too. Pretty much a reverse version of the Jag-Stang, which was actually Ryan's first Fender when he was a kid. Indeed, the original doodle for the Mus-Uar was done by Ryan back in '98. The body shape is pretty much an exact split of the two guitars - Mustang top horn, Jaguar bottom. They fit together pretty well to be honest - it took some finessing but the shapes weren't TOO challenging to put together! To play, it has more the feel of a Jaguar ultimately, but should feel familiar to any Fender offset player. The prototype didn't have contours and was a slab body, but this was eventually changed after being played on the road for a couple of tours. The bridge was also changed from a traditional Jaguar bridge to a adjust-o-matic. The kill switch was included for noise makers - with the guitar having the ability to play in third bridge position it seemed like a kill switch would be useful to those kind of players too.
It's cool to finally have that doodle turned into a real guitar after all these years.

The bass was a different challenge altogether. I played Mustangs originally, and was always frustrated that I couldn't get a full scale bass Mustang. My vintage Mustangs would just fall apart on the road, so I eventually moved to the harder wearing P-Bass. So this bass was designed for people who like Mustangs but want something a bit more substantial. I also wanted to pay tribute to the Bass V - which was a very unpopular Fender model, and really freaked the Fender guys out when I proposed bringing it back! But I always thought it was cool looking and wanted to try and give it another lease of life. It was a real challenge to make it work though. The shape of the original V was really unusual, and the body size was really out of whack with the neck, so we had to do a lot of finessing with the shape (while not deviating too far from the original intent), as well as trying out different necks etc. The original prototype (the one that is in the live pics in the earlier thread) was undersized, and I felt that it was having an identity crisis of sorts - a short scale bass with a medium scale neck. So we scaled the body up, and now it feels like a substantial, full size instrument. The medium scale was used because the bass was intended to be part Mustang, part Precision - so we met in the middle. Fender were also keen to do another medium scale bass.

These guitars are designed for Fender and are influenced by earlier models and obscurities - but that was the intent. I saw some people on the other thread criticizing us for that, which seems a weird criticism - most signature models stick much closer to the originals! We weren't looking for the glory of a signature model or whatever, we thought it was better to use this opportunity to try and introduce a couple of new shapes. We purposely wanted the signatures to be discrete and on the back of the headstock because we just wanted to put some more unusual offsets out there into the world. We figured that people who didn't like our band wouldn't give the instruments a fair shake for that reason, so have purposely downplayed that element. And that seems to be the case, judging by some of the things that I saw written in the other thread. But whatever - it's not about that, it was about making a couple of cool offsets, and personally, I think we did that.
As for the names - yeah, we wanted the guitars to have specific names, but there were licensing issues with the Mus-uar apparently, and the bass I wanted to call the Comet Bass, but I guess it was gonna be troublesome to get a brand new trademark for a first run instrument.

We wanted them to be Squier so that they were affordable, and bought as people's first quality guitar, or for modders to go to town on - not an expensive acquisition for sunday polishers.

It's been interesting to check this place out, and like I said, I'm glad a bunch of you seem to dig these guitars and are excited about them - that's pretty much exactly why we did it - they are offsets designed by offset fans, for offset fans.

Just one more thing - they haven't actually been officially announced yet - some of those stories were jumping the gun.

If anyone wants to know any further info, or what the process of designing a model for Fender is like in reality, or anything like that I may be back here from time to time. We were also around the whole time that the Marr Jaguar was getting designed (it was based on JM's Cribs workhorse Jag), so have some insider info on that too for all you JM Jag owners.

Cool.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by lunaticjaguar » Sat Apr 02, 2016 3:08 pm

Not familiar with The Cribs but I dig the Mus-uar, nice one. If its affordable in Canada I will be pretty tempted when it comes out. Dig the colour/matching headstock

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by grapesoda » Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:11 pm

Jarman wrote:
We wanted them to be Squier so that they were affordable, and bought as people's first quality guitar, or for modders to go to town on - not an expensive acquisition for sunday polishers.
:-* You are dudes amongst men. :-*

Thanks for the post! It's cool to get an idea of your inspirations and experiences with designing it. I hope I get to play one sometime!

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by windmill » Sat Apr 02, 2016 5:42 pm

Thanks Jarman for sharing all that information. It puts a lot of the discussion into a context that it didnt have before.

Look forward to hearing more about your experience of the process of getting these guitars to where they are today.

:)

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by Mechanical Birds » Sun Apr 03, 2016 12:29 am

Cool post! I always think it's weird when people criticize stuff like this in the same way they'd criticize like, the 4,000th version of a strat because both of these are almost entirely new guitars, like you said, and not just another rehash of well-worn territory. At the same time though, people have enough experience with the offset tremolo and adjusto-matic bridges to know that they don't like it, so if any of the criticisms are valid I think it'd be that one. Otherwise, I'm sure it was a total dream come true for you guys to design a guitar for Fender - JESUS, I can only imagine the weight that'd carry for a lot of us, as I'm sure you can tell.

If you're reading this, please allow me to say that I am very excited to try these things out. I can't tell you how cool I think it is that you guys got to do this, like I said a total dream come true. I'd also like to commend you for wanting to keep them affordable, as that's an obviously-rare thing for most players. At the end of the day, these guitars were (and signature models pretty much always are, right?) designed to meet your preferences, so I hope nothing negative that people have to say really bothers you about this, because honestly it shouldn't!

Also, any idea at all when these might show up?

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by thenewromance » Sun Apr 03, 2016 2:37 am

Thanks for your post! I'd love to try out the bass someday, I'm a short scale fan but find the medium scale concept very interesting. Thanks for having Fender produce a medium scale model! I think that was sorely missing in their portfolio.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by dylanafghjkl » Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:43 am

Great post Jarman! When I first saw the trem placement (more than 5mm away from the bridge) I had a feeling that the guitar was designed by someone that actually cares about offsets. Never heard of The Cribs. Might listen at some point.

Anyway, really nice looking guitar, if it's affordable in Australia when it comes out I'm definitely buying it if not just as a modding platform.

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Re: Squier unveils The Cribs signature

Post by Musicman20 » Mon Apr 04, 2016 2:50 am

The fact that the band are taking notice of the interest in their signature models is great.

The fact that Gary Jarman comments and gives background information is class.

The Cribs are really really cool, I love their combination of indie and punk, mixing ace melodies and anthems with a more punk like sound.

It must have been ace to have Marr join in and write. 'Cheat On Me' is a standout track.

Looking forward to catching them this year at Leeds Millennium Square! I hope the offsets are out in force.

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