15 Iconic Offset Players
Published on 06 March 2025
Offset guitars. What do they tell you about the person playing them? Are they iconoclastic, anti-guitar heroes? Are they grunge-rockers who carve their own musical path? Are they noise-makers who reject the status quo (as it were) of the establishment? Or are they posers who can’t play?
I’d say ‘yes’ to most of that (not the last one, personally), at least when you look back throughout the last 40 years of guitar music. Today, offsets could actually be seen as the current mainstream choice, but that didn’t happen overnight. Artists such as those celebrated in today’s blog decided not to use the typical Strats, Teles and Les Pauls to convey their musical message: they used the ‘other’ guitars, the ones that were a slightly funny shape and had strange controls. These artists saw blank canvases of potential where others simply saw out-of-date has-been guitars.
These artists had - and have - a decidedly different set of priorities when it comes to guitaring, and the Jaguars, Jazzmasters, Mustangs, Duo Sonics and all other offset guitars seem to have been the correct tools for their art.
Today, I’m celebrating the most iconic offset guitar players ever.
The Most Iconic Offset Players at a Glance
Kevin Shields
My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields developed an entirely new vocabulary for the instrument, and changed the whole game entirely.
Utilising Jazzmasters (and sometimes Jags), Shields pioneered the concept of ‘glide guitar’, which is easier to understand if you hear it, frankly, but it involves the constant manipulation of the long-armed tremolo on Fender’s offsets whilst drenching the guitar signal in fuzz and effects.
Depending on your sensibilities, It’s either an inane droning racket or some of the most divine sonics that can come from a guitar. I know which opinion I prefer!
Robin Guthrie
Talking about divine sonics, the Cocteau Twins must be one of the most heavenly sounding bands ever to exist, with Liz Fraser’s wonderfully expressive vocals bathed in layers of undulating, heavily effected guitar texture.
A firm believer in letting the guitar do all the hard work, Robin Guthrie created guitar parts around the effects themselves, often blurring the line between guitar and synth. His main Cocteaus guitar was a 1962 Jazzmaster, but he had loads of offsets, including a very tasty Fender Electric XII.
Johnny Marr
A signature Fender Jaguar for the ex-Smiths supremo? It may have been surprising at the time, but Marr’s genius is of a mercurial type indeed, and he saw something in the Jag that others maybe didn’t. He’s certainly stuck by it, using the model almost exclusively since its release, on diverse gigs such as Modest Mouse, Hans Zimmer and The Cribs.
Back in the days of the Smiths, he used everything from Les Pauls to Rickenbackers, so his adoption of (a relatively modified) Jaguar says more about his aims now than about capturing old glories.
Kurt Cobain
Nirvana’s frontman was such a fan of Fender’s offsets that he actually created his own brand new version. The Jagstang - released posthumously - was, as the name suggests, a literal blending of Jaguar and Mustang, a design that Cobain arrived at by chopping up pictures of the two guitars and literally sticking one half on top of the other.
So goes the story, anyway.
Prior to this, Kurt loved Duo Sonics and Jaguars, which might have been down to the availability of them in pawn shops at the time: he was a lefty and had to pretty much accept whichever guitars were available to him whilst on tour. Fender have since honoured his memory with multiple signature models including the Jagstang, Jaguar and Duo Sonic.
Patti Smith
A post-punk icon like no other, Patti Smith toured with the Blue Oyster Cult and, upon releasing her debut record Horses, provided the blueprint for the entire ‘alternative generation’ that followed.
Smith would probably consider herself a poet and frontperson long before she’d think about her guitar playing, but her use of a Fender Duo Sonic is definitely not coincidental to it becoming the female grunge guitar du jour! Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Courtney Love and loads more 90s rockers chose the Duo Sonic in tribute to Patti Smith.
Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore & Kim Gordon
These artful noisemongers come as a pack of three, of course. The endlessly inventive, intertwining guitars of Sonic Youth have perhaps put offsets on the map more than any other act, and it’s as much the attitude of ‘anything goes’ demonstrated by these players as it is the beautifully busted up guitars themselves.
Ranaldo and Moore have been very open in the past about their guitar choices: they needed as cheap and functional a guitar as they could get their hands on, particularly when they began experimenting with alternate tunings. More tunings = more guitars, and their sonic experimentation was enabled by the dual-switching of the Jazzmaster and the Jaguar. Although Kim Gordon mainly played bass in the band, she wasn’t exclusive to the instrument, and occasionally added guitar parts. Post SY, she plays a lot more guitar and seems to favour - you guessed it - the Jazzmaster!
Tom Verlaine
A post-punk guitar hero before post-punk knew it was a thing, Television’s Tom Verlaine put offsets on the map with the seminal Marquee Moon record. Approaching lead guitar in a way that was somehow simultaneously fresh and excessive - and still full of attitude - Verlaine and his Jazzmaster found ways of being a lead guitarist in an age when it was not only frowned upon, but openly reviled. The word ‘angular’ has maybe never been more apt than when used to describe his clean, tight and decidedly unique guitar parts.
Marc Ribot
Tom Waits’ famously atonal axe man may have used an ESP Tele on Raindogs and other Waits classics, but he’s far more known these days for his vintage - and almost entirely demolished - Sunburst Jaguar.
From the noise rock of Ceramic Dog to the somewhat ‘Cubist-Caribbean’ (I may have invented that term) styles of Los Cubanos Postizos, Ribot is never a man to walk away undefeated from a fight with a guitar. More than most players, his attitude and sheer physical relationship toward his guitar is a fundamental part of understanding his style and ethos. A devout student of learning exotic styles, he’s also singularly unimpressed with guitar culture, and has a healthy irreverence that keeps a manic, lively edge to his art.
Elvis Costello
You don’t often see Elvis Costello popping up in guitar blogs, which is maybe a little bit strange since his commitment to the instrument is pretty obvious. A snappy dresser, Costello never strays far from his vintage Jazzmaster, and is perhaps one of the reasons why so many iconoclastic players also choose this particular offset. Costello is not an intimidating character: he’s a guy that anyone can aspire to be, and that’s sometimes more influential than anything.
Blixa Bargeld
Nick Cave’s former axeman and founder member of Einsturzende Neubauten is as iconoclastic as it gets. As a vocalist and guitarist, Bargeld is simultaneously revered for his unorthodox techniques (his ‘inner screams’ have to be seen/heard to be believed) as for his attitude to guitar playing. Bargeld is as likely to create a confrontational texture as he is to use a slide, a floating trem and (a very rare thing for guitarists) discretion to create subtle, complimentary parts.
He’s a fan of the Fender Mustang and Jazzmaster, and often uses unusual tunings to take better advantage of his slide and whammy bar.
Nels Cline
Does anybody love offset guitars more than Wilco guitarist Nils Cline? His collection of vintage Jazzmasters is flabbergasting (“I picked it up and it was love at first feel”), and he’s not afraid of a Bilt or two.
Cline was a jazz head at the same time as being a punk/alternative player, rather like Marc Ribot whom we looked at earlier. Is that a factor of being an offset fan? Whatever the case, Cline is an inventive and interesting player, though one who doesn’t draw too much attention to himself. Not a bad thing!
J Mascis
Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis is perhaps the complete opposite kind of guitarist to Nils Cline. A fan of ear-splitting volume and extended solos, Mascis clearly wasn’t paying attention when grunge supposedly killed the guitar solo in the early 90s (of course it didn’t).
Mascis is a devotee of the Jazzmaster, twinned with a fuzz pedal and Marshall stack. He is also a familiar name to guitar fans thanks to his Squier J Mascis signature Jazzmaster guitar, one of the most enduringly popular models since it went on sale over a decade ago. To try one is to be converted!
Courtney Love
She’s divisive, she’s controversial, she’s a proper rock star. Courtney Love brings a sometimes calamitous, always invigorating agency to everything she does, and put her band Hole in the centre of the 90s alt-rock scene.
Armed with her signature Squier Venus guitar from the iconoclastic Vista series (check out current ‘vintage’ used prices online if you’re brave!), Love was the poster girl for the grunge generation and a lot more besides.
Why Do These Players Choose Offsets?
It seems to me that there is a sort of kindred ‘outsider’ spirit to most of these players. They are not taking part in the shred olympics, and that ‘anti’ stance seems to extend to their instrument choice.
Practically speaking, several of these offset players make direct use of elements like the floating vibrato and dual circuitry, which are features that can’t be found outside of certain offset guitars.
There is the appeal of not using the tools of the previous generation too, but that applies less to today’s offset players as those from the 80s, I suppose. Today’s offset players are doing what we all do: using the same guitars of players they admire and want to align themselves with.
Jazzmasters, Jaguars and Mustangs are more popular than ever. Does that mean that the true iconoclasts should be using something else now?
You tell me!
Click to View a Selection of Fender Offsets
