Cheapest way into a vintage offset?

[cestlamort]

I'll echo the above and suggest that you figure out a (rough) budget and have that money set aside to pounce if something turns up. Mustangs haven't gone as crazy yet, but probably will as vintage Jazzmasters and then Jaguars have gone up like a meme stock, so mustangs (and duo sonics) are probably next in line.

If you're open to non-fenders, an old G&L might be a good way to get that feel and vibe at a reasonable price (judging on the f100 I had, it felt like a vintage Fender).

[andy_tchp]

Musicmasters should in budget? They'd be the only 'cheap' vintage Fenders I've ever seen in Australia (<$1000).


But... they don't interest me much either.

[whitewatersky]

https://www.elderly.com/products/fender-jaguar-1968
no idea if this floats yer boat, but I just happened to see it 5 min ago....

[whitewatersky]

I just sold a really clean, 100% original sunburst '64 Jaguar with the original case for $3400.

jeeebs, I'd have been all over that....

[windmill]

dont be shy about it

Ask everyone you know if they know of any for sale anywhere.

Also check Facebook For Sale pages in your area, put the word out there as well.

Put in offers for the amount you are able to pay on everyone you find.

You never know .

Someone might need some cash straight away.

HTH

[alvinstraight]

I bought my refinished (many decades ago) 1965 Jaguar for about $2300 from a small dealer just this summer. It DOES have a little bit of magic in it. This same dealer had managed to buy an original finish Olympic White 1966 Jazzmaster with matching headstock in original case for less than $4000 (not sure exactly what he paid) a couple of months earlier. Decent deals are definitely out there. And this was in Scandinavia, where you generally have to pay a little bit of a premium on vintage Fenders because of limited supply.

Edit: I also just bought a poor de-floyded (!) and refinished 1972 Fender Thinline with the original WRHB for $1000. Let's see if it is salvageable

[HedonismBot]

I've been following the Mustang sales on Ebay for the last few months (checking the sold prices and completed auctions). Dakota reds and refinishes regularly sell on Ebay for around $1500 or less. These are usually sold by private sellers (hence the realistic prices) and go fast, sometimes they're gone within a couple hours. Interestingly, you can check the bidding history of the other bidders on Ebay. It seems like the folks who usually make the fastest offer or the final bid if it's an auction tend to specialize in buying moderately priced guitars and guitar parts from estate sale hunters and private sellers. I bet 90% of such buyers are shops like Chicago Music Exchange and Norman's Rare Guitars. In fact, about 2 months ago I saw a really greened and dirty '65 or '66 Daphne blue Mustang sell within minutes for $1099. Pretty sure this is the one that just popped up for sale (was it at Mike & Mikes? can't find the listing right now, for some reason) for... $2300. And all they did was just clean it and set it up! It's an ugly business.

Another option is looking into buying a Duo Sonic or a Musicmaster. These also occasionally (but not nearly as often as Mustangs) pop up for sale from private sellers, sometimes priced well under a grand. Anyway, if you choose to go this route - set notifications and get ready to pounce, reasonably priced vintage Fenders go FAST. There's obvious risks involved, but since you're a tech you'll probably at least know what you're buying and how to fix it. The downside of this method is that you can't test the guitar before you buy it and most sellers don't bother with the demos. I assume, though, that if you buy vintage at a reasonable price and it doesn't play / sound well, you'll be able to resell it regardless. Worst case scenario - part it out. Good luck on your search!

[HedonismBot]

Oh, and it’s not just the dealers that make money on good deals. I recently saw a “player grade” Jazzmaster (a crack in the headstock, stripped finish, bent whammy, weird marks on the neck, etc.) for sale on FB Marketplace for a little over 2 grand. It’s now up for sale by another guy on FB. He cleaned it and is now selling for 3500. Sadly, the deals are still out there, but there’s also a ton of people who make business on them. And just about ten years ago one could buy used guitars for cheap on Craigslist all day.

[alvinstraight]

Oh, and it’s not just the dealers that make money on good deals. I recently saw a “player grade” Jazzmaster (a crack in the headstock, stripped finish, bent whammy, weird marks on the neck, etc.) for sale on FB Marketplace for a little over 2 grand. It’s now up for sale by another guy on FB. He cleaned it and is now selling for 3500. Sadly, the deals are still out there, but there’s also a ton of people who make business on them. And just about ten years ago one could buy used guitars for cheap on Craigslist all day.

Definitely a lot of this going on. Often the really good deals disappear very quickly, so if you don't spend a lot of time looking, you wouldn't know it was ever there in the first place and all you see is the speculatively priced stuff.

[Highnumbers]

Oh, and it’s not just the dealers that make money on good deals. I recently saw a “player grade” Jazzmaster (a crack in the headstock, stripped finish, bent whammy, weird marks on the neck, etc.) for sale on FB Marketplace for a little over 2 grand. It’s now up for sale by another guy on FB. He cleaned it and is now selling for 3500. Sadly, the deals are still out there, but there’s also a ton of people who make business on them. And just about ten years ago one could buy used guitars for cheap on Craigslist all day.

Definitely a lot of this going on. Often the really good deals disappear very quickly, so if you don't spend a lot of time looking, you wouldn't know it was ever there in the first place and all you see is the speculatively priced stuff.

It's annoying as a buyer/consumer, but consider this..

Back in the day, before the internet provided the outlet and opportunity for every person with an old guitar to get almost top dealer retail prices themselves, vintage guitar dealers were the middleman. They relied on people walking in with gear to sell, or consigning estates, or even buying gear at shows to stock at the store.

Now, to find stock and continue operating, dealers have to compete directly with consumers on the open market. If the upside of places like Reverb, eBay and FB/CL is providing consumers with a direct access to buy and sell, the downside is that dealers have to play in the same field.

One could argue there is less need for vintage guitar dealers these days, but I think they still serve an important purpose as a credible gear source for people who do not know all the minutiae of vintage guitars. Especially at the higher end of the price spectrum.

[Disasterbot]

A few have mentioned, it but ask around. Other players you know. Music shops you frequent. People on forums. Someone knows someone who knows a guy who maybe might have one for sale. I recently acquired a ‘59 Jazzmaster refin for $3500 and a stripped ‘62 Jazzmaster for $3150. It can be done.

[Mechanical Birds]

My entire caring about guitar life has been a series of regrets about either not caring until it was way too late to get in on the ground floor (of when these guitars were seen as unusable bullshit by most people) or not being old enough to have done so. I know everyone interested in guitars probably feels that way - the 80s must have been wonderful for people who give a shit, $500 Pre-CBS strats and $150 Jazzmasters and Jaguars, I’ve heard stories of $50 Mustangs from rando yard sales. That was way before I was even born, though, and while my moms side of the family were pretty well-inclined, by the time I came along only one of them even owned a guitar. My great aunt has a black Music Master, it was ok.

Even though I was too young to really go wild, I definitely remember in high school people bought vintage Jaguars and Jazzmasters for less than $2,000 constantly. Even 10 years ago, Jesus you could still do pretty well. But yeah, now, it seems like that bird flew the coop long ago.

I ended up with a burst 1966 Jag for about a year, through a combination of pressuring my rich friend to buy it and him ending up liking my OW AV65 Jazzmaster more. For a while I was obsessed with it and considered it my forever guitar, but ended up needing a car and at the time rationalized that there were a ton of old CBS Jaguars out there and one day I could snag another one. That and the fact that it took ~6 months of actively trying really hard to get rid of it and until it was gone I never got offers of more than $2,000; until a guy emailed me with a story of his deceased father’s 63 Jaguar being stolen by a scorned ex of his and how he had insurance money to cover the cost of a replacement.

I got $3,000 cash and drove 3/4 the way to meet him. I neglected to take any of my ads down until no shit, 2 months later some herb sent me an offer of like $1,200 or something. All that, to me, seemed to indicate that I shouldn’t have too hard a time if I were to ever be in a position/have the desire to get another one.

But lately, Jesus Christ! I know reverb’s gross little restructure thing where fees jumped like 300% and sales taxes and all that dumb shit were applied have made things objectively more difficult to use favorable math to minimize yr losses, but for fucks sake any kind of bottom of the barrel setup is just insanely expensive. And it’s not really the Jaguar that’s had this big revelation of tons of new fans/notable musicians using them, but the Jazzmaster! I kept up with Mustangs for a while looking for one of the Competition Burgundy guys for a price I’d be comfortable with, and though that never happened the nice examples were across the board less than $3,000. So those were to me probably one of the last ~3/4 vintage Fenders where you could typically get a good deal. The thought of even looking right now to compare that with what inevitably has happened is super depressing though.

I guess I haven’t kept up on transaction histories like I used to, so it’s possible we’re just seeing a bunch of herbs look on Mike and Mike’s website and somehow justify their prices as remotely valid then throwing them up on reverb and those listing prices are significantly more than what anyone is actually paying. I don’t have a lot of faith in that assumption but hope it’s valid.

Really annoying how bad the guitar-buying culture is as one of the worst offenders in shooting yrself in the foot. Guys find a thing they want, come up with the money, surprise sellers everywhere by paying asking prices, then the next guy sees that and adds 15/20% and casts his line expecting to haggle, but instead someone buys it, etc. etc. etc. it’s the same annoyance with retail liquidation sales where people see big explosion signs with huge red and yellow words and get fucking P U M P E D to save 5% on a tv. Let those dickheads sit with their stuff and maybe come back to being reasonable and we could make the whole experience and exciting for everyone.

I think about the guitar econ 101 theory that we just have to wait for the boomers to kick it and, by way of their layman/apathetic heirs, vintage Strats will come down significantly in price. Dunno how well that’s ever gonna work out. Like, even if yr typical 64 Strat goes from $25,000 down to $10,000 that pretty much means nothing to the overwhelming majority of players. There are new/made to look old replicas being sold for like $10,000 anyway. Like, No way it’d be viable at all in Fender’s case to keep churning out expensive as hell guitars that are made to imitate the old ones if the actual old ones cost thousands of dollars less. I haven’t been in an economics class for ~10 years so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t see that being an easily solved issue.

100% for damn sure hope that happens, though!

[Mechanical Birds]

Oh my god that’s so many words. Apologies everyone

[alvinstraight]

There is a lot of cheap money floating around "the economy" these days to keep people spending. Extremely low interest rates combined with the fact that a general public is trained to think about everything around them (homes, identity, stuff) as some form of speculative asset management is probably not helping.

Because nothing really changed after 2008, it seems impossible that this spiral could ever end. But it will come down at some point.

[s_mcsleazy]

70's fenders tend to be the way to go. i recently helped a friend sell a 76 mustang for £1400. 70's jazzmasters seem to be kinda iffy in people can ask anything for them. i've seen them go for between £1200 to £2000. keep your eye open for 70's musicmasters and broncos. ive seen them around the £650-900 mark