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

Shop class...
Hmmm.
I could send the wood for like a buck, but I can't guaratee It'll be fitted.

it'll have hole that line up, but John will need to have the neck off a strat with the neck off so I could get the shape approximated.

Anything else is just... difficult.
John, tell him how to take a neck off.

Taking a neck off is easy if you can just get past the inherent scaryness of it.

1. Prop the instrument face down on some sort of inclined surface, so that it's supported only at the base of the body and at about the 3rd fret. Think towel on a table, with a stack of books under the neck.

2. Capo the neck at the 1st fret, if the strings are still on it (yes, it is ok to leave the neck under tension. Don't worry so much.)

3. Grip the instrument with your thumb on the neckplate and your fingers on the front of the neck. What you want to be able to do is counteract the tension of the strings as you remove the neck bolts. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, because if you don't, the string tension will pull the last screw out of the hole and strip/crack it. Which is bad.

4. Now, while maintaining your death grip, remove the screws in a cross-pattern (upper right, lower left, lower right, upper left). When you have removed all screws, slowly release your hold on the neckplate, and let the strings pull the neck from the body in sort of a clmshell motion. Ta-dah! Now you are a skilled luthier. Tell all your friends.

To reattach neck, operate in reverse.

First thoughts :

1) Amazing build quality
2) Really nice neck - great finish, really fast. Action nice and low.
3) ALL the pick-up positions sound good and the rhythm circuit wasn't as dark as I was expecting. Will definitely be able to get masses of good sounds out of this.
4) Why the feck do they ship these with 09 gauges on? I reckon I'll have to go up to 11s right away. Mind you, even with 09's I didn't get the strings to pop out of the saddles on bends, apart from the low E which jumped when I yanked it hard.

Incidentally, Peter Cook's is a pretty strange place - it's in a residential street off the Uxbridge Road, and is sort of in a couple of houses knocked together. Really shabby from the outside, but nice inside and v.friendly and helpful staff. Good prices too.

The Stratocaster scale is 25.5" from saddle to nut. This is only about 4% difference in scale. All Gibson guitars, Les Pauls etc, are 24.75". That's only a quarter of an inch difference between the Jaguar and the Les Paul. Far too often is the Jaguar referred to (and dismissed) as a "short scale" guitar. When in fact it is more of a medium scale. And as has been mentioned, not dissimilar to the standard Gibson scale. There are also smaller scales than 24" used for guitars as well. For example, the 22.5" scale necks used on 'student' Mustangs, Musicmasters and Duo-Sonics etc.

The fretboard radius is curved to 7.25" on a Jaguar, the same as alot of other Fender guitars. Some people complain about "choking off" on these radius. A problem which can always be solved by raising the action by a very small amount. If people are insistent on having the action so low, in combination with bending 8's two whole notes, then nothing can stop choking off on a 7.25" radius. A Japanese Jaguar special has a 9.5" radius fretboard.

Sonic Youth signature Jazzmasters: http://fender.com/sonicyouth/

The Thurston model looks kinda cool actually.

i'd quite like the lee ranaldo one!

My Jazzmaster is in my mom's closet in America and I miss it so much.

as a committed wide-range humbucker fan, the lee guitar looks amazing.

I guess what I really want is the Lee model with the green finish of the Thurston one.

Honestly though, shouldn't the signature models be just a box of Jazzmaster parts to build your own config?

Anybody know what they mean by "newly revoiced and improved Fender wide range humbuckers"? Did they actually use cunife magnets this time around? Curious bout what's actually under the hood.

probably overwound like every other bastardized fender pickup of the last 10 years :(

What y'all think of this jazz/jag bridge: http://www.masterybridge.com/home.html

My thoughts:
1) $HMMM.00
2) Posts are set or whatever and it doesn't swivel. They say it stays in tune w all kinds of divebombing: but how??
3) Otherwise, want.

Offset guitars website have many users of the mastery bridge. Most are totally positive about it, but there are a few reports that you MAY still need to use tape/glue etc to stop unwanted movement. I haven't seen or used one, but it seems a pretty expensive solution to me. I don't believe you can divebomb with it - i've certainly not read any reports that the range of operation is any greater than with any other jag or jazz trem/bridge combination.

I've just changed the bridge on my Jag to a Mustang bridge with tape-wrapped posts, and it's 100% stable. I think you may lose a little bit of trem range by locking the posts compared to a properly set up, fully floating system (I have my Jazzmaster with stock bridge for comparison), but I was having so many rattling and tuning problems with the stock bridge that I decided to switch.

Dude does some divebombing in a video on the website, actually.

Hmm - I'll have to look at that.

dude in one of my bands sprung for one of those mastery bridges, it's pretty sweet

Bumping to vent how much I hate setting up my Jazzmaster. I hope GZeus doesn't yell at me cuz I shimmed it with match sticks.

WTF

WAI?

(ahem: What about it?)

They look like the bullets from the "tooth gun" in eXistenZ.

I can see that they'd make a difference to a fixed bridge instrument, but on a Jazzmaster with so many other things affecting tone?

ahem: What about it?

Oh nothin really, just WTFing because I have an abundance of time, and basically what snoball said. Like it'd probably be way more effective to develop some G&L style saddle lock thing or something, or something to directly increase string>body transference, etc... Also LOL @ "man made ivory" angle for yr weird plastic parts.

I have decided that I need one of these things more than I need financial security

I guess sooner or later [...] this happens to everyone?

Are the Mexican Classic Player ones regarded as a pretty good bet with these (JM or Jag, haven't played them recently to work out which one I like best)? There don't seem to be so many Japanese reissue ones readily available anymore as per Dr C's annoyingly shrewd investment upthread. I'm not so interested in the affordable blacktop ones because they come in shit colours. Yeah.

The CP ones are like c£700 in the UK and $800 in the US; are US dealers allowed to ship these things to Europe? Does anybody know any good websites that do? Alternately, is trying to import from Fender Japan worthwhile?

The Classic players are variable. I have played a few, mainly Jags - one was a great sounding guitar but a couple were virtually unplayable because of bad set-ups and/or badly cut nuts. That can obv be fixed though. The CP Jazzmasters seem to have a good reputation - the one I played was a nice guitar.

I ended up buying a CP Jag HH, which I got for £375 + a fuzz face in part-exchange. I wasn't really looking for one, but it was an unbeatable deal. It too, had a badly cut nut and took a lot of work to get stable. I still haven't gigged it as I'm not 100% confident in the tuning stability. I might replace the tune-o-matic type bridge with a roller bridge, which seems to be a popular mod.

What you have to know is that the pickups on the classic player series are hotter than the CIJ or AVRI Jags and JMs. My Jag never really sounds clean but it certainly growls with crunch or fuzz. The coil split really works well, with loads of tones available. Full single coil is quite Jag-like, although a bit chunkier. You can't quite get the classic Jaguar tones with them.

There are now the MIM Blacktops, which seem to have had good reviews, but I think they look hideous and are very far from the orginal designs. There are Squiers on the way too, but I wouldn't touch them. My advice would be to look out for a 2nd hand CIJ, or if you can afford the extra, then try to get one from Ishibashi in Japan. I've heard good reports about their customer service and you'd have access to all kinds of custom colours that we don't often see in the UK. Or, if the hotter pickups don't bother you, then try some Classic Players, but watch for quality problems.

Hunt down a j. Mascis unless the sparkle purple or tunamatic is a dealbreaker.

Those things look pretty cool but I already got a sparkly signature model type guitar and I think I want something a bit more traditional/non-affiliated.

Thanks a lot for all that Dr C, I was starting to lean towards CIJ so that kind of confirms it for me. Ishibashi seems to have become a bit more of an expensive proposition these days so I might just keep an eye out for cheap second hand ones here and bite the bullet on importing later in the year if nothing turns up.

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.