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

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

got a rare chance to crank up my jag today. the properly appointed and set up jag is a pretty amazing instrument--between the shape, scale length, and bridge/tremolo design it's easily the most comfortable fender to play at least for me.

As I mentioned on the strat/tele thread, I picked up a set of CuNiFe WRHBs with the long-term plan of using them in some-sort of partsmaster. Not a Ranaldo-style minimal circuitry Jazzblaster, but something more like a what-if '72 Jazzmaster Deluxe. Chunky neck, maaaabyeee stacked volume/tone pots for each pickup, but after MONTHS of quarantine time burned on differing configurations, trawling for parts on Reverb, and getting worked up over esoteric differences on warmoth vs. allparts, I impulsively bought an early-00s CIJ JM-66 Jazzmaster that just showed up on Craigslist a couple days ago.

https://qc-ckb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ilx/jm-cij66.jpg

7.25" rosewood chunky neck, most of hardware is pretty good. If I was to source it all separately I'd end up spending a lot more. The previous owner swapped out the 1M tone pot and put in a pair of AVRI pickups several years back. I don't like the boring sunburst/tortoise shell look, but it's aged into a cool guitar. First step is to rout-out space for the WRHBs and swap the pick guard. I'm still considering a Lake Placid Blue refinish, but one step at a time...

Great get, you won’t regret it. For a what-if 70s machine, can’t go wrong with a black pickguard, with the WRHBs it won’t be boring. Headstock’s not 70s but you can draw inspiration from the last original run 82 Jazzmaster like I did.

http://33.media.tumblr.com/597f165a53b7d8e2988c51402faf42d9/tumblr_ml67h7XXAG1qdtuwuo10_1280.jpg

that's pretty

I like Spitfire Tortoiseshell pickguards for sunburst but they’re $$$.

The tort that Fender uses looks like crap but Spitfire has a lot of depth and variation.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CO2_qosBmHm/?igshid=1jmhao90zif5f

I wonder how much it weighs. I’m guessing 15 pounds give or take.

I can't deal with it. Totally sets off my OCD over fingerprint smudges.