I think I've finally had it...

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bigswifty
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by bigswifty » Wed May 21, 2014 6:24 pm

The most annoying thing about this article is this: "Fact: Offset snobs suck at guitar and barely know anything about them."

I know I don't post regularly, but spend enough time on here to know that if this place is any measure of the people who play offsets, I would say that Jazz/Jag players tend to spend a lot more time educating themselves on the setups, quirks, limitations (see: this thread) and odd wiring layouts of their guitars then say, your average Les Paul guy, who spends more time pondering the tonal advantage of vintage-correct binding (I say this owning a Les Paul Custom in Pelham Blue). Also, the stereotype that if you play an offset, you bang out nothing more than reverb-drinched noisewash has become tiresome. I continue to use my Jazzmaster as my primary guitar for almost any jazz gig I play.


All of that said, my Jazzmaster is a rock. It's more stable than my LP, Tele and Strats, and is my most reliable instrument. Granted, it took a bit of adhesive and some lubrication here and there, but it did the job. My Jaguar, on the other hand, truly is a temperamental pain in my ass more often than I'd like to openly admit.

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biro
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by biro » Thu May 22, 2014 3:52 am

jazzmasters and jags both feature a complex design compared to strats and teles...
that's why it is harder get them setup properly... but once you get it done, it's done. i feel like they have the potential to be as stable as strats and teles if you know how to operate on them...
i don't even need to tune them for weeks (light handed guitarist and not much of a trem guy here).
furthermore, you can always customize your guitar to you personal taste and needs as you can take off and replace every single part of the guitar. that's the basic idea that stands behind every single fender, not offsets only... and i believe it was leo's first conscious intent... meaning that i would have had the same approach to strats and teles as well.
so, i really don't see the point... offsets are just guitars, like all the others, but with a bit more of personality which is a big tic in my book... and f**k trends...

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by josheboy » Fri May 23, 2014 10:13 am

Hmm. I have two JMs and a Jag. Initial setups and getting the necks perfect were a chore, but they've stayed put rather nicely. A little loctite on the bridges (or using staytrem bridges) keeps them from buzzing. Necks straight or with a very slight relief, so again, no buzzing. I seriously have zero troubles. And I'm no pro. Maybe you're doing something wrong?

Maybe you have major climate changes throughout the year? That could cause some changes in the neck.

Strats are so blah. How anyone can go from JM to Strat is beyond me.

just my 2 cents.

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by V_____ » Fri May 23, 2014 12:35 pm

Actually, last week I played a show after taking my main JM right out of the bag after having not tuned it for like...a week? Played the whole thing and used the trem a bunch and realized later that I had forgotten to tune up at all before playing, but it made no difference at all. That's how stable the tuning is on that guitar.

I really credit the great tuning machines I have on there. They're the gotoh vintage style locking tuners and damn those things do not go out of tune even with very heavy trem use.
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by astorminheaven » Sun May 25, 2014 5:08 am

Update:

After spending copious amounts of time with my Jag, the damned thing seems to be playing like a dream again. So, now that I have fallen in love with the bitch all over again, I'm ready to forgive and forget. The guy who mentioned being punched in the nuts hit the nail on the head, my cheapo offsets are sort of expected to do things I don't like from time to time, but my expensive guitars certainly do like to hit me where it hurts.

Also, I realized my perverse love for strats is a reality I will have to live with now. There is no going back, I'm afraid. :freako:

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by veryredtomatoes » Sun May 25, 2014 1:05 pm

astorminheaven wrote:Update:

After spending copious amounts of time with my Jag, the damned thing seems to be playing like a dream again. So, now that I have fallen in love with the bitch all over again, I'm ready to forgive and forget. The guy who mentioned being punched in the nuts hit the nail on the head, my cheapo offsets are sort of expected to do things I don't like from time to time, but my expensive guitars certainly do like to hit me where it hurts.

Also, I realized my perverse love for strats is a reality I will have to live with now. There is no going back, I'm afraid.
There you go then. I feel the same way about LP's that you do about strats, I think. Luckily, I found one that works, an oddball LTD that's normal scale (25.5) instead of that weird Gibson in-between length that just doesn't work for me. Work with what you got, that's the shit right there.
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by setyaback » Wed May 28, 2014 7:08 am

astorminheaven wrote:Update:

After spending copious amounts of time with my Jag, the damned thing seems to be playing like a dream again. So, now that I have fallen in love with the bitch all over again, I'm ready to forgive and forget. The guy who mentioned being punched in the nuts hit the nail on the head, my cheapo offsets are sort of expected to do things I don't like from time to time, but my expensive guitars certainly do like to hit me where it hurts.

Also, I realized my perverse love for strats is a reality I will have to live with now. There is no going back, I'm afraid.

I agree, my nut-punch analogy was rather :-*

And I duck as I say this, but my #1 is a strat as well. Hardtailed it and put a set of '65 Haze pickups by TTS in there and it's just a perfect guitar. Sounds great no matter what amp I it through.

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by facon » Wed May 28, 2014 7:39 am

I have an AVRI JM with a Staytrem. It's the most maintenance free guitar I own. As soon as I got it, I had it professionally set up by a great local luthier. No buzzing, plays exactly how I want it, sounds great. I tune often out of habit, but it rarely needs it. Actually, I recently went on vacation for two weeks and when I got back the guitar was perfectly in tune. I use that nut sauce stuff, maybe that has something to do with it?

I realize that they can be finicky though. One of my guitar players has a MIJ JM that never feels right to me. It buzzes and goes out of tune easily. He'll be getting it back from being set up this week. Maybe that will change.

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by gutter rock » Fri May 30, 2014 1:02 am

biro wrote:
nicest article ever.
btw, love my offsets and probably will forever (currently assembling one more)...
Good Lord this article is one of the most ignorant pieces of writing I have wasted my time reading. Who the hell lubes their damn tuners regularly? The writer also acts like hipsters won't play teles because they aren't cool enough. Has this moron been to any shows lately? Teles are BY FAR the most common guitar I see on stages for quite some time. I even go see many of these so called hipster bands. BTW, isn't this anti-hipster thing getting old yet? Reeks of blues lawyer strat player jealousy to me. Strangest thing about hipsterism is that many who make fun of it either are or are trying to be hipsters themselves. I don't care how you dress or what u play, give me a good song that moves me.

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by fuzzking » Fri May 30, 2014 2:13 am

reading the article made me cringe.

but I actually know a guy who was so hip his nickname was hipster. that was back in the 90s. he bought a jazzmaster and when trying to set it up, he just unscrewed everything and didn't know how to put the guitar back together. so he walked back into the store with a bag full of guitar parts and asked the them for a "setup". ha ha. but I really can't be bothered who's buying which guitar and if they know how to tune it or not, or which fashion dictate they're victim to.
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by Big tuna » Fri May 30, 2014 2:30 am

well this has been interesting reading ! I got my first jag a squire a couple of weeks ago and have been fooling with the bridge and then the nut back and forth. Reading these posts and other sites lets me know all the little strange buzzes and pings [ not from missing plane ] may never go away , after playing teles so long they got boring set em up and play em. the jag has so many sounds it is worth tinkering with , but it is subject to change .

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by V_____ » Fri May 30, 2014 10:11 pm

gutter rock wrote:
biro wrote:
nicest article ever.
btw, love my offsets and probably will forever (currently assembling one more)...
Good Lord this article is one of the most ignorant pieces of writing I have wasted my time reading. Who the hell lubes their damn tuners regularly? The writer also acts like hipsters won't play teles because they aren't cool enough. Has this moron been to any shows lately? Teles are BY FAR the most common guitar I see on stages for quite some time. I even go see many of these so called hipster bands. BTW, isn't this anti-hipster thing getting old yet? Reeks of blues lawyer strat player jealousy to me. Strangest thing about hipsterism is that many who make fun of it either are or are trying to be hipsters themselves. I don't care how you dress or what u play, give me a good song that moves me.

I like this bit:

"To those not in the know, offset guitar indicates the guitar body is constructed using an offset-waist position; that means the neck sticks out away from the player slightly more compared to a center-waist construction. On most offset guitars, you can see the "lean" in the body where the top is positioned more forward than the bottom."

Or, you know, you could just actually listen to what the name says and figure out that offset-waist has nothing to do with the neck. It just means that the waist of the guitar is not symmetrical on both sides of the body (that is the two narrowest parts of the body are not oriented perpendicular to the strings as on a tele).

Anyway, this article is probably just a troll but I used to live in Hipster central Greenpoint near WIlliamsburg and used to go to the local guitar shops all the time. Let me tell you, most "hipster" guitarists know an absolute ton about their instruments and how to play/use them. They're actually pretty much huge gear nerds in most cases and use offsets for the sound and features more than anything. It's typically older blues players who don't know shit about how the technical capabilities of their guitars because SRV is Jesus and he turned his knobs to the same numbers no matter what amp and yadda yadda whatever.
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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by Mad-Mike » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:08 pm

Hipsters...whatever, just another title setup to tell people WHAT to play gearwise for whatever genre of music, I just jumped from experimental rock to Hard Rock/Heavy Metal recently and have been using the same stuff I've been using since 2006....the same ol' Offsets I've been banging on on Youtube since 05'.

I don't see a lot of hipsters with Offsets, but then that's probably because I'm not likely to get booked on a gig with hipsters. I might see a Jazz bass once in a blue moon, but that's about it.

As for attention, I find most any guitar needs a little tweakage time and again and usually they tend to stay well adjusted as long as you play it a lot.

Goin' in for a session with the Jaguar and Jazzmaster tonight. Got some Drop-D Blues Metal to lay down. Everything else besides the offsets (and Paul Dean) are the first to go for me if I had to pare down the collection as I've found I can always rely on one of the offsets to see me through a gig or a session with little to no hiccups.

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by hydra19 » Wed Jun 04, 2014 3:36 am

I went through all the Jaguar crap, the bridge problems, the buzzing, everything and there are many posts of my problems in this forum but somewhere around a year and half ago it all came together. I had tried all kinds of strings on it, always buzzed, then added more relief, then less, eventually stripped the neck screw holes...I know what you mean.

But for the last year it's the one of my 5 guitars that stays in tune the best. Everytime I pick it up, I play a chord and it's a familiar feeling and a familiar neck.....I am a Mosrite guy and have 3 of those beauties but there is something about the Jag. It just feels familiar comfy and I do love playing it. I also have a Les Paul that I only look at, wish I could sell it.

My advice is to keep trying, maybe eventually the guitar will give up fighting you and settle down. My Jag's actions is almost as low as it can go, and it doesn't buzz but I've added some more relief in the neck for that

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Re: I think I've finally had it...

Post by Ticker » Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:03 am

After spending the past year learning all I could about guitar tech, it's become an obsession. I've gone through so many threads here about the issues and challenges and solutions, and topics like these are just heightening my interest. Bring it, I say! Just piecing together a parts JM, first purchase was a MIJ standard bridge to thumb my nose at the cop-out mods (well, OK, the $10 price may have had much to do with it too) :D Can't wait to start my project thread, getting there...

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