NGD - Road-worn Jazzmaster

[Etienne Rambert]

I always wanted a Jazzmaster. I took it out of the box Friday, 8 December, 2017. I played it for a few days. I only ran it directly through the mixer, into monitors & cans.

 

Impressions:

 

1. It's not a Swiss-Army Knife guitar. It's uses are limited for me.

I'll use it mainly for lead guitar or for whammy-bar parts on recordings.

 

2. It's not a joy to play like my two Gibsons. But it has its own distinct sound — more Tele than Strat.

 

3. The AV 65 pick-ups are noisier than my Gibson w/P90's, which I originally thought were noisy. These pick-ups are noisier. (But FWIW, I can almost get a JM sound out of that Gibson, but no whammy bar.)

 

4. The action is good. But it's nowhere near the fast, smooth action of either of my Les Pauls. Nice neck. Nice set-up by Sweetwater.

 

5. I find the Pau Ferro fretboard less attractive than Ebony or Rosewood. But it's very dense, hard and fast.

 

6. I love the light weight. It's probably about the same weight as my Les Paul Faded. Yet, the LP seems much heavier. I suspect the tiny body size of a LP has something to do with its perceived heaviness.

 

7. It holds its tune well. I don't have any bridge problems - yet. But I have a light touch.

 

8. Because of the weight and action, my main playing guitar will be the Les Paul Special w/P90's - not the JM. The JM will get a lot of case time. But it will be my main lead guitar.

 

9. The JM design is not elegant to my mind. But this RW JM definitely sounds like the mid-60’s Jazzmasters I remember. It’s Surf & Spaghetti-Western ready out of the box. It looks like an old Jazzmaster too.

 

10. The Jazzmaster's rhythm circuit is just plain bizarre. (I'm probably one of the few people on earth who will have a use for it.)

 

11.a. To get a decent RHYTHM tone, you need to keep it set to LEAD. Set to RHYTHM, you get a fuzzy, diffuse tone, that will be useless for most players.

 

11.b. The RHYTHM circuit only gives you the neck pick-up, without any high-end.

Set to LEAD, you can dial in both pick-ups.

 

12. Like my Gibson LP P90's, there are no separate tone controls for each pick-up.

 

 

 

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[DeepEnd]

Happy (Belated) New Guitar Day. Not sure about your date; January 8 was a Sunday. The 8th of this month was a Friday though. My college roommate had a Jazzmaster and he was a heck of a guitarist. I learned a lot from him.

[mrbrown49]

HNGD! It sure is pretty.

 

[gardo]

HNGD ,too bad the finish got all nicked up . but it still looks good, The fretboard appearance might be something you need to get used to

[Etienne Rambert]

My mistake. I was a month ahead of myself. Friday 8 December, 2017.

[Etienne Rambert]

I got a good price on it. $799 (down from $1024). That's the only reason I bought it. I don't care either way about relics. Sweetwater offered me a bargain on this one. That's why I bought it.

[badpenguin]

HNGD! Pretty, but like you, it wouldn't be my number one.

[t_e_l_e]

HNGD

[Etienne Rambert]

For those who don't already know, here are the Jazzmaster controls.

Note the RHYTHM/LEAD switch.

 

Up = RHYTHM

Down = LEAD

 

I'll keep mine set to LEAD 95% of the time. The RHYTHM circuit has a very strange sound. I can't imagine what was on their minds when Fender designed it.

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[speakerjones]

I'll keep mine set to LEAD 95% of the time. The RHYTHM circuit has a very strange sound. I can't imagine what was on their minds when Fender designed it.

 

Er, probably Jazz.

 

If you find you have trouble with the bridge, I highly recommend the Staytrem as a replacement.

 

[onelife]

...

I can't imagine what was on their minds when Fender designed it...

 

Just as some people have a hard time understanding why there was no tone control for the bridge pickup incorporated in the oniginal design for the Stratocaster, we have to keep in mind the state of the evolution of the electric guitar and its associated electronics at the time the Jazzmaster was designed.

 

Today, most guitarists switch between lead and rhythm settings with some sort of foot controlled device - such as changing channels on an amplifier or switching on/off one or more F/X pedals...

 

For a long time, I used to keep the tone controls on my electric guitars turned all the way up (unless I was trying to play some jazz) but, when I started playing Telecasters, I realized how effective they can be. It helped to understand how using the two tone controls with the three pickups and three position selector switch in the original Stratocaster gave the player "presets" along with a master volume control - which was more valuable in the '50s and '60s than it would be now.

 

 

I see the Jazzmaster as a product of a) some of the ideas that were first introduced on the tele and the strat along with b) the state of the electric guitar at the time.

[Etienne Rambert]

I guess a player can get a warm, Jazzy tone using only the RHYTHM circuit.

But a decent archtop with a floating humbucker does a better job IMO.

 

I would not describe Jazz guitarists of the late 50’s era as rhythm guitarists though.

Maybe Fender just used Gibson’s term for the neck pickup - ie., the RHYTHM pickup to pitch the instrument to Jazz players.

 

And the sound of the neck pickup w/ no tone dialed in? Muffled.

Others have called it wooly. It’s an odd sound.

 

I like my Les Paul because I can nearly get an acoustic guitar tone out of the 490R & T set. No way to do that w/ these AV 65’s. This will be a lead guitar only on my recordings.

[badpenguin]

Well my friend, here's the issue:

 

Fender wanted in on Gibson's turf of the jazz guitar in the 50's, so they created the "Jazzmaster" (and to a lesser degree, the Jaguar.) Somehow, they thought, adding a .47 "tone" cap, and a shorter scale, would get the jazz guys away from the Gibson hollow bodies. For some reason, they thought so strongly about this, they were ready to dump the strat, to promote the new guitars. Problem was..

 

... they sucked. No one bought them, no one played them for jazz. The bridge was a jangle fest of rattles, and no one cared for the trem system The only group of players that dug it, were the new and growing surf rock people. They LOVED that brittle bridge pickup drowned in reverb. So it was discontinued sometime in the 60's.

 

Now here comes the late 70's, and all the beginning punk bands needed guitars, but they couldn't afford the strats and Pauls, but they could get a Jazzmaster for under a hundred bucks or so in pawn and used shops. No one liked them, so it was perfect for the new sound of punk. Ask Elvis Costello, he LOVES his to a point, that Fender gave him a signature model. They started becoming cool again.

 

Now today, from most of the big companies, all we see as "new" are rehash older re-issues. The Jazzmaster, and Jaguar, and to a lesser extent, the Marauder, all come from that time period, and all were massive failures.

 

There may be ways to make it more playable, and have some decent tones, but you would have to dump the original wiring, and go for stacked p90ish pickups, and have series/parallel switching. How much time do you want to put into it? And how much modification do you want to do to it?

[Etienne Rambert]

I appreciate the strat design after playing my Jazzmaster awhile. Fortunately, I have a light touch. So no bridge problems yet. I can't imagine how punks pounded on the strings without unseating them from their bridges.

 

The tremolo is a nice touch. The 60's tone is there. AV 65's sound exactly like I remember. No way I'd swap out these pickups except for a different JM set.

 

I may swap out the Gibson P90's though. I really like the 490 R&T set on my Faded. I'm not crazy about the P90's on my Special. I may swap them out for another Gibson PAF set.

 

I suspect the JM pick-ups don't have much output. Hence, the noise. The Gibson P90's are quieter. They're probably hotter too.

 

Jazzmasters are pretty expensive these days. I've been watching.

You may see some good discounts on this model though. I got a good deal

on it. $225 off Sweetwater's advertised price.

 

It's rare that SW offers a discount like that - 22% off. I'm seeing deep discounts in a few places on RWJM's.

 

Well my friend, here's the issue:

 

Fender wanted in on Gibson's turf of the jazz guitar in the 50's, so they created the "Jazzmaster" (and to a lesser degree, the Jaguar.) Somehow, they thought, adding a .47 "tone" cap, and a shorter scale, would get the jazz guys away from the Gibson hollow bodies. For some reason, they thought so strongly about this, they were ready to dump the strat, to promote the new guitars. Problem was..

 

... they sucked. No one bought them, no one played them for jazz. The bridge was a jangle fest of rattles, and no one cared for the trem system The only group of players that dug it, were the new and growing surf rock people. They LOVED that brittle bridge pickup drowned in reverb. So it was discontinued sometime in the 60's.

 

Now here comes the late 70's, and all the beginning punk bands needed guitars, but they couldn't afford the strats and Pauls, but they could get a Jazzmaster for under a hundred bucks or so in pawn and used shops. No one liked them, so it was perfect for the new sound of punk. Ask Elvis Costello, he LOVES his to a point, that Fender gave him a signature model. They started becoming cool again.

 

Now today, from most of the big companies, all we see as "new" are rehash older re-issues. The Jazzmaster, and Jaguar, and to a lesser extent, the Marauder, all come from that time period, and all were massive failures.

 

There may be ways to make it more playable, and have some decent tones, but you would have to dump the original wiring, and go for stacked p90ish pickups, and have series/parallel switching. How much time do you want to put into it? And how much modification do you want to do to it?

[badpenguin]

 

I may swap out the Gibson P90's though. I really like the 490 R&T set on my Faded. I'm not crazy about the P90's on my Special. I may swap them out for another Gibson PAF set.

 

 

 

If you have P90's, Gibson's humbuckers won't fit. Nor will ANY standard humbucker, unless you want to rout out some wood. My personal opinion is: If you wanted humbucker sound, you should have gotten a guitar with humbuckers.

http://www.dimarzio.com/pickups/soap-bar

I have the super distortion, and the tone zone in my Ibanez JS700. KILLER pickups, and with a simple push/pull switch, can go from humbucker, to P90 single coils.

[Etienne Rambert]

I bought the LPS w/P90's because it came with $189 robos, a gold $200 Gibson hard-shell case & a titanium nut. It was a screaming deal @$579. My Les Paul Faded is occupying that case now. But if I have to, I'll just keep the P90's on it. No sweat.

 

It's my main playing guitar now. I like the wide neck, the lighter weight and the robos. My local guitar tech seems to think there are HB's that will fit.If not -- no sweat.

[onelife]

I guess a player can get a warm, Jazzy tone using only the RHYTHM circuit.

But a decent archtop with a floating humbucker does a better job IMO.

 

I would not describe Jazz guitarists of the late 50’s era as rhythm guitarists though.

Maybe Fender just used Gibson’s term for the neck pickup - ie., the RHYTHM pickup to pitch the instrument to Jazz players.

 

And the sound of the neck pickup w/ no tone dialed in? Muffled.

Others have called it wooly. It’s an odd sound.

 

I like my Les Paul because I can nearly get an acoustic guitar tone out of the 490R & T set. No way to do that w/ these AV 65’s. This will be a lead guitar only on my recordings.

 

I think the RHYTHM label was more about the different roles the guitar might play during a song - switching from rhythm to lead for example. The standard Gibson setup allows independant volume and tone settings for the two outside positions of the selector switch. Fender answered that with their version.

 

In the fifties and sixties amplifiers were quite basic so dialing up a hotter sound for a lead solo was usually done right on the guitar. The idea of being able to do it with just one switch was appealing to guitarists. With modern setups we usually make the switch with our feet so some of the older guitar designs can seem a little weird today.

[Etienne Rambert]

I'm still getting to know this thing. The 'road-worn' part is a whole different experience. Yesterday, I noticed the finish has been rubbed off the top of the headstock - as if it had been turned upside down and dragged fifty meters on a sidewalk.

 

Besides the oddities that go with a Jazzmaster - the relic'ing of the instrument makes it a bit odder. The frets are brand new. The rest of the guitar looks and feels 10 years old.

 

Playing my two Gibsons is a different experience. Everything about them seems new & high-quality. The fret-work is immaculate.

 

This Jazzmaster is not up to that level IMO. But it has a whammy bar and it sounds & looks like an old Jazzmaster. Also, I got a really good price on it. That's enough.