Tell Me about the Fender Jazzmaster (MOD: Also Jaguar, etc.)

I was winning a Japanese white Jazzmaster for £500 on Ebay with 30 seconds to go and then two people piled in while I was elsewhere and it vanished for £627; I could have Bought It Now for £625. This is the end of the world.

Don't worry, they do come up quite often. Other ideas:

1) Call Pete Cooks. They are not listing any CIJs on their website, but may still have some left, or be able to get some.
2) Andertons have a CIJ 66 reissue (blocks and binding) model on their website. It's £700 though, but they do normally negotiate. I got a great deal on an AC30 there.
3) Macaris still has one or two quite recently.
4) Regent Sounds - I think they can still get them and may have one or two left. I work quite near Denmark Street and could look if you like.

Absurdly, the punchline to that Ebay situation was that the winning mystery bid was actually some spectacular counter-gazumping by my own girlfriend to fend off the late interloper. Hopefully she will let me play it.

The possibility of getting a good deal on an AC30 certainly still appeals though, once I've got out of the poorhouse.

Oh cool - didn't you realise at the time? So you have the guitar then? If so that's great news - I think you'll love it. Mine is my absolute number one guitar, I alternate between it and my CIJ Jag for gigging - they're both great guitars but the Jazzmaster is the one I couldn't live without. It's absolutely stock apart from a Mustang bridge - a lot of players claim that the stock CIJ pickups are no good, but I'd violently disagree with that. It's true that they're not the same as the vintage or AVRI pickups, as they are narrower and more Strat-like, but they sound fantastic to me.

Yeah, it was a private auction so all I could see was that I'd been outbid by two other people in the last minute while I was working late. Wifey put up with about an hour and a half of my psychopathic brooding before coming clean, concerned that I might sell a kidney to import one from Japan before she could spring the surprise.

I haven't actually collected it yet so I don't know how well it's been looked after, but I'm glad to hear you're happy with yours in its original state, cos after springing money I don't have to get it I'm a bit too cleaned out to be thinking about AVRI pickups or buzzstops at this point.

Yeah I'm playing this thing with old strings and the stock Japanese pickups through a shitty, beat up Roland Cube-60 and it still sounds pretty great to me

Fender Japan is making all the cool stuff right now. I really like the look of this Jazzmaster HO hollowbody

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyFI21QFe4Q

That Jazzmaster hollow-body kind of looks reminicent to a a Reverend Flatroc with that double binding.

It looks cool though.

Ocasek's pink Jazzmaster on the beginning of "My Best Friend's Girl" is the ur-sound of all Jazzmasters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKuAPXd-M7U

That's a cool clip. Sounds good and right up on the band. You can see that Ric has the Jazzmaster in the middle position and that Elliot is flipping back and forth between the neck and bridge pickup on the Tele.

How it started

https://qc-ckb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ilx/red-jm-1.jpg

How it's going

https://qc-ckb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ilx/red-jm-2.jpg

wow very neat wiring!

Oh nice!! What jazzmaster is that? Am currently sorely tempted to get a J mascis squier as an upgrade on my crap strat

I would guess that’s a proper old one which has had a nice refinish

The good parts are from 1965

https://qc-ckb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ilx/red-jm-3.jpg

Hi Abigail! Her pickup + the AC30/Ampeg amp pair is a reason to keep living.

https://qc-ckb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ilx/red-jm-4.jpg

On a long-enough timeline every guitar you own will eventually become a vintage collectable. When I got hold of it in 1996 I knew that the body was refinished and the wiring was questionable, but other than a refret in 2007 it's been change-strings-and-go ever since. Three days into quarantine, the strap broke and somehow the guitar transformed into a neutron star material and crashed down on my foot. Ironically, we were playing The Cure's "Grinding Halt." Creativity just stopped around here and I spent much of the rest of the year disassociating and walking up and down the San Gabriels.

Anyway, the crash broke some of the wiring inside and it was time to do something about it. The pickups are off at Fralin getting new leads put on (my soldering skills are no way good enough to that job) - I should get them back this week.

whoa whoa whoa which Ampeg? AC30 and 60s blue-check are my go-tos... seems I should look into the Jazzmaster...

whoa whoa whoa which Ampeg? AC30 and 60s blue-check are my go-tos... seems I should look into the Jazzmaster...

heh. '64 reverberocket, '66 Jet. and i still have a zoom ultra-fuzz around here somewhere. guess it really is jazzmaster time!

Oh I wanna see it when it’s all back together.

Wow, don’t think I’ve ever seen an Ybarra Jazzmaster pickup! And an A width neck too. Rare bird!

https://i.imgur.com/ZGF3Sh6.png

I guess this is the only photo I've taken of my Jazzmaster (which is currently in its case buried behind a dozen packing boxes). I bought a set of the new wide range humbuckers but I can't bring myself to have it routed to fit them.

I've never played one, or even held one. Isn't that odd?

i haven't either! but i've become JM-curious

Cool-looking JM milo. I’m wanting to build some sort of Lake Placid Blue w/black pickguard/knobs JM as my WRHB project, but I want to make it more of a big mid-70s era “what if there was a 1972 Jazzmaster Deluxe?” than a Ranaldo knock-off. I love the look of those 70s pearl blue/black Gibson SGs and want to reference that in a JM build, but I’ll need a B&B neck, etc.

milo you should pick up e.g. a Mascis Squier to put the WRHBs into, that's a beauty. AV65?

and here's my trinity (1968 Teisco TG64, 1967 Mory, 1984 Fender Japan)
https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5611/30406274592_c0e89f2e60_k.jpg

Me and the JM/AC30 revving up in front of MOCA at 1m50s and onward:
https://vimeo.com/25737733

undeniably the coolest rig there

Yep, it's one of the Thin Skin '65s - technically Firemist Silver but it was B-stock because it

For the blaster, I'm thinking of ordering a Guitar Mill JM body routed correctly for WRHBs to start with, then charring it with a blowtorch and oiling or shellacing over that. I did that on a scrap Telecaster body (separating at the glue joints) and it looked pretty cool.

b-stock because the color was off - it's bluer than normal (closer to ice blue metallic, which didn't make me mad)

I def thought it was IBM!
If you’re doing a charred finish you can leave it uncoated after rubbing it back, I’m guessing you know it’s a Japanese woodworking technique, shō sugi ban. The other one to consider is iron and vinegar ebonizing but that’d depend on the timber.

Anybody here own any of the current Vintera series? Any good?

Folks on /r/offset seem to like the Vinteras, especially for modding.

That's good to know, looking to buy my first somewhat decent quality guitar having only ever played cheap ones, don't have enough money for the US Fenders.

Fralin's work queue was 2+ months, so in the meantime I cleaned up the shielding, the grounds, and overspent on Reverb on a legit '65 aluminum pick guard shield. Beliefs can be expensive, but OTOH it was only $55 to fix the pickups.

Putting it all back together...

https://www.quartzcity.net/ilx/jm_assembly.jpg

Puisheen's YouTube channel is essential, if not mandatory, for folks on this thread. Mike is unstoppably boisterous about JM/Jaguars - his current series on refitting this 1961 JM is great knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrYr3VZqy3g

So in the end, it takes me hours to do what a good tech can do in minutes, but hfs at the end result. I hadn't realized just how much signal I was losing and how many years had passed by in "oh, it just sounds like that" ignorance. Unbelievable improvement. Sounds badass now. gtf out of the way shoegazers.

https://www.quartzcity.net/ilx/jm_assembled.jpg

woo!

looks great et

good lord that's hott

that's pretty

yup, looks great!

Are Mustang tremolos really as unreliable as they're said to be?

They're pretty janky and don't return to pitch well for lighter gauge strings. Also only good for dives unlike a floating trem (cf Jag/JM and Strat trems). Reputation has suffered a bit due to folks stringing them the wrong way - the right way is strings going into the "cigar" from the bridge side, then curving under the cigar to come back to the bridge. Many people just pass them from the tail side straight through to the bridge, which wrecks the break angle and makes the trem not really work.
Good news is that they can be locked by replacing the spring posts with a couple of machine screws and two washers above the baseplate.

Maybe I'll go for a Jazzmaster instead, more into floating tremolo rather than divebomb stuff.

I've tried jazzmasters a couple times and feel like I just don't really get them. FWIW I looked at the "notable players" list on this wiki page and there's no one I especially like -- certainly some good players that I respect, but no one I really love listening to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Jazzmaster#Notable_players

I like the Mustang tremolo a lot - it's not just for dives (the Mustang bridge is floating like a Jag/JM but with the different saddles so strings are less prone to popping out) and you can get cool subtle effects just using the heel of your hand against the lipstick tube instead of using the bar.

see ~5:20 into this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCCRQf-VYQ

My only complaints about the Mustang are that with older ones a lot of them are the narrow A necks and overall the bodies are so small they don't really feel right for me.

pretty sure I'm team Jaguar now overall, the 24" scale is so fun and easy to play and the stock Pure Vintage '65 pickups in new ones are just right in terms of brightness without being shrill and output without being too hot

yeah I think I was thinking of the Bronco trem re the dives-only