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

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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Re: Why didn’t Leo Fender come up with a brand new shape for the Jaguar?

Post by Embenny » Thu Jun 25, 2020 6:58 am

jvin248 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:43 am
The Jaguar, being shorter scale, was the 'student' version of the premium guitars, and why the family resemblance.
There were lower priced student options too, but the jaguar gave a kid a 'Cadillac' level choice. Now they are played by everyone.
The jaguar was never advertised or intended as a student model. It was the flagship of the entire lineup. Not sure where you're getting that, other than presumption that a 24" scale "must" have been intended as such. It wasn't.

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

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:26 am

jvin248 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:43 am
.

The Jaguar, being shorter scale, was the 'student' version of the premium guitars, and why the family resemblance.
There were lower priced student options too, but the jaguar gave a kid a 'Cadillac' level choice. Now they are played by everyone.

As a sincere form of flattery: Gibson's "Fender Fighter" SG copied the Jazzmaster more than the Tele/Strat, after the failed Les Paul model (LP sales were poor and most of them ended up in pawn shops for cheap -- where some beginner teens bought them for low cash and later made a few famous records). However, it seems more like a committee design smash together of different ideas than the Fender offsets, resulting in problems like the neck dive and the tight pickup placement due to the 24 frets and neck tenon.
No idea wtf yr talking about here

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

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:37 am

Steadyriot. wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:18 am
Leo Fender started off improving his designs by coming up with new stuff, but after a while he started refining the designs at hand.
Post FMIC he mostly just reworked strats and tele's for MM and G&L.
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What’s the yellow thing in the middle was that released?

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

Post by Embenny » Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:41 am

That was the unreleased prototype for his Z-coils.
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Re: Why didn’t Leo Fender come up with a brand new shape for the Jaguar?

Post by BoringPostcards » Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:01 am

mbene085 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 6:58 am
jvin248 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:43 am
The Jaguar, being shorter scale, was the 'student' version of the premium guitars, and why the family resemblance.
There were lower priced student options too, but the jaguar gave a kid a 'Cadillac' level choice. Now they are played by everyone.
The jaguar was never advertised or intended as a student model. It was the flagship of the entire lineup. Not sure where you're getting that, other than presumption that a 24" scale "must" have been intended as such. It wasn't.

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Exactly.

As I mentioned above, the Jaguar was the first Fender to have a 24" scale, and it was due to feedback from Jazzmaster players, that the neck felt a tad long, due to the way it hung on a strap.

All student models were 22.5" and didn't get a 24" option until after the release of the Mustang, with the Duo-Sonic II and Musicmaster II, which was well over two years after the Jaguar was designed.
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Re: Why didn’t Leo Fender come up with a brand new shape for the Jaguar?

Post by JVG » Thu Jun 25, 2020 1:57 pm

Mechanical Birds wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:26 am
jvin248 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:43 am
.

The Jaguar, being shorter scale, was the 'student' version of the premium guitars, and why the family resemblance.
There were lower priced student options too, but the jaguar gave a kid a 'Cadillac' level choice. Now they are played by everyone.

As a sincere form of flattery: Gibson's "Fender Fighter" SG copied the Jazzmaster more than the Tele/Strat, after the failed Les Paul model (LP sales were poor and most of them ended up in pawn shops for cheap -- where some beginner teens bought them for low cash and later made a few famous records). However, it seems more like a committee design smash together of different ideas than the Fender offsets, resulting in problems like the neck dive and the tight pickup placement due to the 24 frets and neck tenon.
No idea wtf yr talking about here
That’s an unnecessarily harsh response.

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

Post by mortron » Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:26 pm

It's almost like nobody reads previous posts... :fp:

Yeah some one sentence posts may seem harsh, but it has to be short and to the point or else it's message may get lost or not even read apparently.

To smooth over any harshness...

Yes the Les Paul were selling poorly... 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. It's a thought out guitar, designed mostly in part by one of the most inventive musicians of the time, who didn't like the companies attempt to keep an existing product relevant. While I am sure they took some of what other companies were doing into consideration, it was likely to improve the marketability of an existing, albeit now modified design.

That, and read the fuckin' article from Fender! Posting nonsense undercuts anyone's attempt to educate and inform without just mucking the water for everyone.

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

Post by andy_tchp » Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:28 pm

mortron wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:26 pm
It's almost like nobody reads previous posts... :fp:
tl;dr.

PS I don't know if it's been covered five or six times previously but it definitely wasn't a student model, it was the top of the line offering...
Last edited by andy_tchp on Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why didn’t Leo Fender come up with a brand new shape for the Jaguar?

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:20 pm

JVG wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 1:57 pm
Mechanical Birds wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:26 am
jvin248 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:43 am
.

The Jaguar, being shorter scale, was the 'student' version of the premium guitars, and why the family resemblance.
There were lower priced student options too, but the jaguar gave a kid a 'Cadillac' level choice. Now they are played by everyone.

As a sincere form of flattery: Gibson's "Fender Fighter" SG copied the Jazzmaster more than the Tele/Strat, after the failed Les Paul model (LP sales were poor and most of them ended up in pawn shops for cheap -- where some beginner teens bought them for low cash and later made a few famous records). However, it seems more like a committee design smash together of different ideas than the Fender offsets, resulting in problems like the neck dive and the tight pickup placement due to the 24 frets and neck tenon.
No idea wtf yr talking about here
That’s an unnecessarily harsh response.
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

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

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:21 pm

The TL;DR was definitely a joke please understand I don’t want some poor kid’s mom emailing the admins and asking for me to be banned

Edit* yeah, thanks Mortron
Last edited by Mechanical Birds on Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:28 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:41 am
That was the unreleased prototype for his Z-coils.
That guitar looks sick as hell! Sort of Stingray bass shape? I’ve tried to keep my eye out for a 70s MM guitar but never see them for anything close to what I’d feel good paying for one. It’s a bummer they didn’t really do a trem way back either, and that’s pretty much an example of what this thread is. Looking at it, I can imagine some kinda skuzzy and awesome system that was made to work without a bar maybe? Like Isaac Brock’s custom thing or a Floyd without the bar, I always liked finding guitars you could still manipulate the trem on without having to have it fully set up - like a Mustang can do fun trem stuff using just yr palm.

I’ve yet to see a G&L that’s moved me enough to ever care about spending time with one but those old Music Man things have always seemed cool to me. It’s weird to me that they didn’t take off more with punk bands and stuff. They existed for a pretty short amount of time and were written off pretty fast from what I’ve read, seems ripe for adoption by weird countercultures the same way the Jazzmaster and Jaguar were and like the Peavey T60 should have been/might finally have started being today in 2020

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

Post by Mechanical Birds » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:36 pm

Also can I please just for the record point out how fucking stupid it was for Music Man to call their basses by the same name as their guitars? Trying to figure out how to properly filter yr search results on like any platform is enough of a pain in the ass when looking for guitar stuff but god damn, having to look at 8 pages of results to see ~4 guitars peppered thru the results is not a fun experience if you don’t give a shit about the bass guitars

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

Post by JVG » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:48 pm

Mechanical Birds wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:20 pm

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...

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

Post by bterry » Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:04 pm

The Jag is an interesting guitar in the evolution of Fender, always struck me as a bit wonky but it does seem like it was designed more specifically to address some player needs at the time as opposed to being a groundbreaking new guitar like the previous Jazzmaster, Strat and Tele/Esquire models. The one thing I didn’t see mentioned here (or maybe I just missed it, apologies) is that Leo was very conscious of Gibson as his main competitor and, like the Jazzmaster, he was most likely going after that player with the shorter 24” scale.

It’s like Fender was chasing Gibson ‘rock’ guitars with the Jag design opposed to the ‘jazz’ market they were pursuing with the Jazzmaster. Ironically, it was even more immediately associated with surf music than the Jazzmaster that proceeded it, it fell out of favor pretty quickly.

Anyway, players loved the Jag b/c the body was sleeker than the Jazzmaster, the scale made it more compact than a Jazzmaster and the chrome appointments made it sexy and splashy to the eye with all those custom color options...

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

Post by DaddyDom » Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:34 pm

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

I am always interested to note how many LP covers featured the E-Type. (Quite a lot!) Until today though, I have never seen a Jaguar car in an ad for something else called a Jaguar. Maybe there was some kind of gentlemen's agreement in those kinder days.

I think Leo would have hated the E-Type, it's hardly workmanlike and modular in its construction!

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