Were teenagers able to afford the Jaguar or Jazzmaster in the early 60’s?

The price for a Jag was 379.50 in 1962 which in todays money is roughly 3700 bucks…!

Were Fender guitars not as ubiquitous as it seems in surf groups at the time or did it just happen that people had more extra spending cash than we do today?

I think this is why you have all those 60's photos of kids posing with their gear. It was hard won!

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Because they didn't buy them. Not outright, anyway.

Back in those days there was the marvel of hire purchase (is it called an instalment plan in the US?), where you paid a deposit, took it home and paid it off over the year. As long as Dad signed for it and your gigs paid for it, it was a great arrangement.

These days we have credit cards for those purchases you can't afford (more correctly they should be called 'debt cards' but I guess they wouldn't be so popular), but in the 60s it was hire purchase. "Take it home today, pay for it tomorrow!' was a popular hook

In the UK it was nicknamed the 'never never', either because you never owned it and you never finished paying for it

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Last edited: Mar 03, 2023 01:59:18

Also, most teenagers never could buy one. In so many photos of teens with their early bands, they have cheaper guitars like Harmonys or imported guitars bought at department stores. The Jaguar was definitely not a starter guitar. If they started playing regular gigs and making money, they could get one then, and probably through the installment plan.

Or if they were lucky, they had rich family members.

If I'm not mistaken (not an expert) this was still the era of Keynesian demand side economics.

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Edwardsand is on it. I’ve sat in and chatted with many first wave surf bands from the early 60’s and they all reminisce about their first cheap guitar and the all the band plugging into the same amp!

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I never saw a jaguar or jazzmaster in the 60s, at college in the early 70s. One mustang in that time. Most kids bought used. Strats were uncommon then too, at least where I was.

mad_dog wrote:

I never saw a jaguar or jazzmaster in the 60s, at college in the early 70s. One mustang in that time. Most kids bought used. Strats were uncommon then too, at least where I was.

There was a band, in our town, that played a local TV show over the noon hour, and the lead player had a Jaguar. Beyond that, the Jaguar was mostly a guitar I saw in the Fender brochure. There were Strats around, and Teles were something I would associate with older guys, at least locally.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Jaguars, and Jazzmasters, to the best of my knowledge, were out of production for some time. Bridge problems were well known among Offsets, even back in the ‘60s, and the fixes and setup tips that we enjoy these days were not nearly as well-known back then, as they are in our Information Age. Back in the ‘60s, many people took their guitars back to the store for something as simple as a string change or replacement. There weren’t any Internet forums where information was shared. Beyond that we now have products such as high-end bridges, nylon bushings for the bridge posts, and the myriad of guitar products which didn’t exist in the ‘60s, but which make life better for all guitarists, these days.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

edwardsand wrote:

Sales of Jaguars were pretty low all along, but quite poor in the 1970s, and they stopped making them in 1975. Fender Japan restarted production ca. 1985. Even though some punk and other contemporary bands were using them in the late 70s and early 80s, the used ones stayed cheap back then. I bought mine in 1985 for $300 with money earned from my summer job working at a tile store. Then when Nirvana broke big in the 90s, Jaguars truly became popular and prices of used ones skyrocketed.

And now you can get a Squier Jaguar for close to the original price of a Fender Jaguar, and that is not adjusted for inflation.

That is consistent with what I remember. Jaguars were what I refer to as an “aspirational guitar”. For a parallel example, a Gretsch Country Gentleman was an aspirational guitar that we might see on the cover of a Chet Atkins album, but most buyers couldn’t afford. Instead, Gretsch sold Tennesseans to people whose attention was attracted by seeing a Country Gent.

Casting my mind back to my earliest days as a player, I went to the music store in hopes of seeing a Jaguar, but it was much more likely that I’d see a Mustang. When it came to buying, the Jaguar was out of reach, but the Mustang was, at least, feasible. Simply put, aspirations for a Jaguar probably sold a lot of Mustangs.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.