Jag or JM: how did you choose your first one?

[Larry Mal]

You know, I never really noticed. That book made it seem like those models were consigned to trash heaps or museums to me. They may as well have been from a thousands years ago from the impression I got.

[dc]

All I knew about them was a black and white picture in Ralph Denyer's book:

holy smack! back in college i taught myself basic chords with that book. i'd forgotten all about it but seeing those illustrations brings it all back. i used to pore over it for hours and hours at a time, usually stoned, trying to glean whatever wisdom i could about the instrument. now i wish i still had it -- i donated it to a local music school some years ago, after blowing some dried up "shake" out of the binding

[Larry Mal]

i used to pore over it for hours and hours at a time, usually stoned, trying to glean whatever wisdom i could about the instrument.

You're never going to believe this incredible coincidence.

[Gavanti]

I loved Jazzmasters and Jags from the time I saw them on stage when I started going to shows in the late 80s. I rarely came across any for sale, and ones I could afford were even more rare. The Squier Mascis made owning an offset possible. As my employment became more steady and I could save up more, I ended up buying and selling several JM's and Jags, eventually settling a vintage one of each. I play both pretty regularly, and enjoy their different sound and feel, but in a band context the JM and a Firebird non-reverse have been usual go-to instruments.

[MayTheFuzzBeWithYou]

While my first interest in Fender offset guitars was in 2006 - helping my bandmate decide which electric to get (he had a pretty cool Ibanez Talman acoustic) so Jazzmasters and Jaguars were our favorites. While I preferred a White Jaguar with a Tort guard (for all the coolness of the chrome) he went for a Japanese CAR Jazzmaster (not my colour at all) due to the matching headstock. I still played Les Pauls for a few years - and my first offset turned out to be a Danelectro Dead on 67 that I got in 2011 and sadly sold it in 2013. A bit later I had the idea to want the possibly rarest thing there was... a Rickenbacker 481 (their Bass as a guitar) - never even found one listed... but there was the Duesenberg Double Cat which was somehow close - I didn‘t like the Fireglo finish - but the idea of a semi-hollow guitar that was not a 335 style (or a gretsch) intrigued me... and when I discovered it I knew this would be mine - the 2012 Thinline Jaguar - double bound sunburst body, bound neck... took me two months to find one as I missed a local ad and it was sold out at Thomann and the others a few days later - never to return... but I found one (in my hometown‘s music store, where I before refused to go for some time - but that‘s another story).
I never really played Jaguars before and wasn‘t a member here back then either - so I didn‘t know that it was only the Japanese pickups to be crappy and microphonic - absolutely unusable with Fuzz - so I exchanged pretty much everything on and in it - but it turned out to be my absolute number one guitar ever since!
So I‘d say aesthetics paved my decision - but it also has defined MY sound for the last 5+ years, so I‘d probably choose that way again!

My other (Fender style) offsets are both pretty new: a white Squier VM Jaguar (so my 2006 vision turned out true too), and my recently finished custom made double bound matching headstock Firemist Silver B&B Jazzmaster... let‘s see if she turns out to be an usurper to my guitar-throne! She still needs a proper setup but already sounds very nice!

[BlueMelody]

I’d always wanted a Jazzmaster since I was teen after seeing Robert Smith on earlier Cure vids like Play For Today, Other Voices, Primary etc. I always dug the look a lot, but it was more about those pure/crystalline tones, especially with a little dose of flange and verb/delay. After I got my first one, I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long...my initial reaction was “should’ve bought one of these years ago”. I never realized how versatile they can be and they always feel perfect in my hands. I play other guitars also, but the Jazzmaster is always in constant use. I bought my first Jag years later (Marrguar), I enjoy that guitar too, but it’s more of a novelty to me compared to the Jazzmaster.

https://youtu.be/5dOANVRy5Vk

[601210]

[...]
The Squier Mascis made owning an offset possible.
[...]

Honestly, the Squier J Mascis deserves a lot of credit for this.

For me, I'd spent hours as a child poring over the Fender website looking at the various guitar models, and the Purple Sparkle J Mascis caught my eye -- that was what led to me discovering Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth in the first place and basically shaping my music preferences for the rest of my life. I had a Squier Tele at the time and was learning blues songs and Rage Against the Machine...

I was literally saving pennies in high school and college with the vague notion that it would be going towards a Jazzmaster, but the cheapest ones available were at least $1000 and had to be shipped halfway across the world. Eventually the first Vintage Modified Squiers dropped (with the funky hardtail bridge) and I got all excited planing out how I'd mod it to have real jazzmaster specs, and then the J Mascis dropped and I jumped on it as soon as preorders opened, going through some shady dude running a one-man importing service. I might have been one of the first guys in my country to have the JMJM, now that I think about it.

[algeriet]

[...]
The Squier Mascis made owning an offset possible.
[...]

Honestly, the Squier J Mascis deserves a lot of credit for this.

For me, I'd spent hours as a child poring over the Fender website looking at the various guitar models, and the Purple Sparkle J Mascis caught my eye -- that was what led to me discovering Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth in the first place and basically shaping my music preferences for the rest of my life. I had a Squier Tele at the time and was learning blues songs and Rage Against the Machine...

I was literally saving pennies in high school and college with the vague notion that it would be going towards a Jazzmaster, but the cheapest ones available were at least $1000 and had to be shipped halfway across the world. Eventually the first Vintage Modified Squiers dropped (with the funky hardtail bridge) and I got all excited planing out how I'd mod it to have real jazzmaster specs, and then the J Mascis dropped and I jumped on it as soon as preorders opened, going through some shady dude running a one-man importing service. I might have been one of the first guys in my country to have the JMJM, now that I think about it.

Haha great story. You've gotta spill which country though!

[s_mcsleazy]

kinda by accident. i've told this story quite a few times but i'll give the abridged version. i was in my teens playing in a punk band. i had 2 guitar. a very heavily modded gibson sg (kinda done up to be somewhere between greg sage's sg and frank zappa's sg) and it was just not jiving with me. i was starting to write more music and the music i was writing was less 1-2-3-4 punk music and more alternative/post-hardcore but i was also listening to a lot of surf at the time.

one day me and my friend were hanging out and a shop had a CIJ jaguar, a vista supersonic and a silver sparkle jagmaster. i always thought offsets were cool but i never had the chance to try one until them. i traded the SG for those 3 guitars and a proco rat and fell in love. sadly the band leader hated the guitars and made me sell them....... then a few months later the band split. it took me years to get another jaguar.

[rhythmjones]

I saw the video for Bad Days where Wayne was playing Steven's Jazzmaster in that hotel room and it was the coolest thing I ever did see.

It took me almost 16 years after that to finally get one.

[LVC]

I was a huge Dinosaur Jr fan as a teenager, and a lot into The Cure and Sonic Youth as well, so naturally the Jazzmaster was my dream guitar. But as far as I remember all the local music shop had were rows and rows of garish Superstrats... The only Fender offsets on the market would have been either vintage or Japanese reissues, and both were non-existent in my neck of the woods in those pre/proto-Internet days.

In the following decade or so I got into hardcore punk big time and found a Les Paul was a pretty suitable tool for the job, so I forgot all about offsets. When I moved away from that scene I went back to listening to my 90s heroes and got into surf and post-rock as well... More reasons to get an offset!

By then the options available had expanded to AVRIs and MIM Classic Players, but the former were above my price range and the latter were not vintage correct enough for my taste. After two sketchy local deals fell out (a ridiculous wreck of a Japanese JM that the seller decided offhand was worth €170 more than his initial asking price, and a Japanese Jag whose seller never showed up after I traveled 200km to buy it) I finally managed to score a much nicer CIJ Jag with all the right upgrades for a pretty decent price on eBay. About a year later, I got an even better deal on a gorgeous OTM CIJ JM on another forum. I still own both and they're still undisputedly my favorite guitars.

The reason I got a Jag first is probably because I had made up my mind that I wanted both a JM and a Jag, and the opportunity to buy a Jag presented itself first. In fact, having never played either, I thought of the Jag as a sort of surf one-trick pony, whereas in my mind the JM was more of an indie rock-only machine... How ignorant I was.

[OffsetUsername]

It's mostly aesthetic for me with the chrome/switches but a strong pull is I really dig the uniqueness of the Jag tone, plus the bridge mute was a really cool feature even though it detuned mine a bit.

[Debaser]

All I knew about them was a black and white picture in Ralph Denyer's book:



So when I saw one, I was surprised. I had thought that they were pretty much obsolete, you never heard of them or anything. I didn't expect to ever see one, I had never heard of a guitar player who used one, and the guitar store employee seemed to hold it in low regard (this was the store that later became the high end Eddie's Guitars here in Saint Louis).

I picked it up and played it, ten minutes later I had put it on layaway. I had found what I didn't even know I was looking for. I sold all my other guitars very shortly thereafter. This was in 1993 or something, I still have it.

I was 12 or 11 when I checked out that book at the library (about 1990). Didn’t have a clue how to play or who the hell played an offset at the time, all I knew is I liked Fenders and I liked the Jazzmaster above all. The folks got me an ‘82 G&L SC-1 at a yard sale as my first electric soon after, that was cool, but if I had found a cheap cheap cheap JM at the time, I’d be playing one from the start.

[Beyer160]

The Ventures and J Mascis played Jazzmasters, that was really all I needed to know- I wasn't into any bands that played Jaguars. Later on after having played both, I realized that I'd made the right choice even if it'd been based on near-total ignorance about the difference between the two instruments. Prior to the AVRI series, offsets were like forgotten relics and NO one knew the first thing about the electronics or setting them up properly. There's an early Dinosaur Jr video that shows packing tape plastered all around the bridge of J's Jazzmaster, presumably an attempt to keep it in tune. 20 years later, we're still dealing with the fallout of the "shade tree mechanic" era of offset setups.

[Maggieo]

Waaaaaaay back in 1984, when I was in art school (Minneapolis College of Art & Design), I really, really wanted a guitar like Tom Verlaine's. I'd heard it was either a Jazzmaster or a Jaguar, so either would be cool with me.

I hung out at music stores all over town, and one day a LPB 70s Jag showed up at The Podium, a mostly acoustic stringed instrument shop. I think I traded a '65 Rickenbacker 330/12 for it. A couple of years later, I sold it to pay my rent.