As such, you had a period there between 1956 and 1975 where Fender had a BUNCH of "offset-waist" guitars with unique pickups, unique bridge/vibrato systems, unique wiring - and a lot of it offers capabilities far diffrent and unique than your standard issue Tele, Gibson, Strat, or Super-Shredder. These include but are not limited to the 3rd bridge effect of the separate bridge/tailpiece on Jaguars and Jazzmasters, the unique whammy system on the Mustang or Bronco, and the unique wiring across the board on the more complicated models. This opens up a whole new world of sonic opportunities and "exploits" of the features, intended or not, that allows one to cultivate their own style or sound.

A big reason "Big rock" and "pop metal" culture rejected these guitars for so long, besides looking like "Gumby Guitars" to them, was where guitar technology stood in the 1970's and 1980's. Back then, most big name rock acts played single channel Marshall/Hiwatt/similiar Amplifiers capable of a lot of gain only through modifications, or boosting through pedals. Gain levels lead to large amounts of noise (something the Jazzmaster was infamous for), or made the treble frequencies too high making the guitar sound thin and tinny. To add to it, the "Dino Rock" culture as some call it, lead to rejection by way of the instruments having complicated wiring schemes, some of which were not managable in a live situation when thinking inside the box.

While on the flip side, "Grunge" and "Alternative" culture hated the metal/big rock/dino culture because the culture was, socially, dominated by classic female and male "sexist" stereotypes, and because of the big money focus and the high levels of technicality that at the time, seemed superhuman. Because, when groups like Tad, Mudhoney, Nirvana, The Melvins, Dinosaur Jr., and what-have-you were not topping charts and making millions (at least, not yet), they had to resort to more affordable instruments - which at the time - due to "Hair metal culture" - were less as expensive than even your regular Vintage Stratocaster or Telecaster guitar at the time, which were still highly regarded. So they all turned to Mustangs, JAguars, Jazzmasters, and other "gumby guitars" and that became their hallmark. However, the Punk Rock DIY Ethos, mixed with the lack of a universally accessible resource for tech data like the internet, as well as maybe some self-esteem issues for some - kept these guys from really knowing how to setup the guitars right and lending to falsehoods like they "don't stay in tune" the "vibrato was designed by a dork" or "cheap and wimpy pickups" - leading to most of these guys jamming in Tune-O-Matic bridges, humbuckers, disabling the complex circuitry in favor of a more traditional 1-volume, 1 tone, 3-way setup.....and somewhat making a reputation for destroying the uniqueness of these guitars to make them "playable", when in reality, it was just understanding and technology behind amplification and pedals had not quite reached the stage it is now.

I, myself, became of "gigging age" in a time when guitar was in a massive upswing in technological breakthrough. While not my favored genres - Nu-Metal and Emo/Screamo really pushed the limits of gain levels, noise gating, and caused guitar manufacturers to create extremely high gain, yet great sounding amplifiers, with really nice high-headroom clean channels. Up and coming technologies at the time such as Amp Modeling and digitally-driven effects pushed this kind of innovation far enough that you really did not need a 20.5K Ohm humbucker with a magnetic pull of a MRI machine magnet to get the same gain levels as a Gibson through the same amp with a 8.4K Alnico Humbucker pickup in it. But guitarists, we tend to be very conservative about our tastes, and so in general, the guitar side of being an instrumentalist, despite hyper-focus on the gear, was simply refusing to accept some of us were taking a different path than the designated signal chains of our favorite genres. An idea totally limiting and *stupid* dare I say considering the fact that all of the greats like Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van-Halen, or even Kurt Cobain pushed the envelope by doing things in an unconventional way that sounded great, was effective within the song for whate the song needs, and set the stage for future generations of guitarists.

My use case is particularly weird because it's essentially "limit pushing" on offset guitars that not a lot of people (surfers, indie, punks, grungers) into those guitars would approve of. The whammy is a big part of it, but the other part of it is leveraging their unique characteristics for this kind of sound. I also noticed something I don't htink others do, a Charvel and something like a Jaguar are not that far apart - they both have pickups screwed into the wood, they both were played by the best pickers of their time periods, and they both were the top of the line axe in their time. Even if the design philosophies are totally different (one pickup, one volume knob, floyd rose, vs. 4 knobs, 4 switches, 2 pickups, and a non-locking floating trem unit with it's own upward movement disablement function). My methods ALSO don't work for everyone.

The reason I don't post much on my channel about it anymore, is I found MY opitimum setup for this, and don't see a seed to seek out anyone else for it. That's actually, one of the reasons I use Offsets to begin with, they're bloody reliable. I have to touch up my Kramer almost every 10 years, but my offset guitars almost need nothing after 15-20 except a few boring, usual adjustments. I've even stopped wearing out trem plates on Stangs because I've been using better and better lubricant for the knife edges - something the Floyd Rose guys do as well (currently I use Brake parts lubricant as it works in a similar, yet more aggressive environemnt).