jcyphe wrote:
My bad I was sleep walking for the month of August. Mods can delete this. Nobody ahd a definitive answer in the other thread anyways. i would be interested to know. i don't think it's big deal. fender took plenty ideas from other people. His design ethos was about making things better.
I wasn't saying you were wrong to post it.
Anyhoo, there
is a definitive answer: people who are making shit up start off with weasel words like
the story goes...
If there was any proof that this guitar existed before the Jazzmaster, the story would have been around long before now. It's been 49 years.
That, plus the fact that Leo
patented the offset body shape. Seriously, if Leo had copied it, do you think he'd be stupid enough to patent it? It would have been simple to prove patent fraud if it had happened, and Fender would have had to hand over 100% of the profits and a substantial damages settlement. It would probably have put them out of business.
Keep in mind that a few years later, Fender sued Gibson over the Firebird, invoking the offset body patent. Fender won that case, which says to me that they were able to prove in a court of law that the design was a Fender invention. EDIT: Checked my facts - always a good thing to do after you've posted - and that case never actually went to court. Fender's lawyers threatened, Gibson's lawyers caved. It amounts to the same thing. Fender won. You don't threaten to sue people over a design you stole from someone else.
But really, that's beside the point, all you need to know is that any sales spiel that starts with the words
the story goes... is bullshit. Especially when it comes to guitars.
