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Fender Jazzmaster
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The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar that was first introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show and was designed as a more upmarket instrument than the Fender Stratocaster, which was originally to replace the Telecaster model. As its name indicates, it was initially marketed at jazz guitarists but was more commonly played by surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s and, more recently, by indie rock artists.
contoured "offset-waist" body was designed for comfort while playing the guitar in a seated position, as many jazz and blues artists prefer to do.
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Encyclopedia
The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar that was first introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show and was designed as a more upmarket instrument than the Fender Stratocaster, which was originally to replace the Telecaster model. As its name indicates, it was initially marketed at jazz guitarists but was more commonly played by surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s and, more recently, by indie rock artists.
Features
The contoured "offset-waist" body was designed for comfort while playing the guitar in a seated position, as many jazz and blues artists prefer to do. A full 25-1/2” scale length, lead and rhythm circuit switching with independent volume and tone controls, and a floating tremolo with tremolo lock, were other keys to the Jazzmaster's character. The tremolo lock can be manually activated to keep the entire guitar from going out of tune if one string breaks. The Jazzmaster also had an extra-long tremolo arm.
The body is larger than that of other Fender guitars, necessitating a more spacious guitar case. The Jazzmaster had unique wide, white "soapbar" pickups that were unlike any other single coil. Jazzmaster pickups are often confused with Gibson's P90 pickups although their construction is similar but not identical. The coil is wound flat and wide, in contrast to Fender's usual tall and thin coils. This gives them a warmer tone that is without losing their single coil clarity. The Jazzmaster has a mellower, jazzier tone than the Strat, although it wasn't embraced by jazz musicians. (Joe Pass, however, used one during his stay at Synanon.) Instead, rock guitarists used the instrument, especially for surf rock. The Ventures and The Fireballs were prominent Jazzmaster users. The Jazzmaster also played a part in the Indorock scene, with guitarist Andy Tielman creating a 10-string Jazzmaster using a red-hot nail to burn holes for the extra tuning pegs in his Jazzmaster's headstock.. This marked the beginning of a long tradition of often-unusual DIY Jazzmaster modifications throughout the next decades.
Fender recognized the need for a purpose-designed surf-guitar, and introduced the 24" scale Fender Jaguar, with a shorter scale, built-in mute, chrome decorations and more Strat-like pickups. The main aspect that deterred jazz players was the Jazzmaster's tendency to produce feedback, especially if the body cavity were left without magnetic shielding. More experimentally-minded rock artists like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine later embraced this as a new way to color their music. The Jazzmaster was also the first Fender guitar carrying a separate rosewood fingerboard with clay dot position inlays glued into a 2-piece maple neck and a 4-ply brown tortoise shell pickguard, although from 1958 to mid 1959 they came with a 1-ply gold anodized pickguard.
Some early pre-production/prototype examples came with a 1-piece maple neck, a rubber fingerboard and/or a black painted aluminum pickguard. Rosewood became a standard fretboard material on other Fender models around 1959. Binding was added to the Jazzmaster fretboard in 1965, and in 1966 the dot markings were replaced by pearloid blocks. An optional maple fingerboard with black binding and block inlays (black and painted, unlike the pearl inlays previously used) was briefly offered in the mid-1970s.
The Jazzmaster was officially discontinued in 1980, although some reports suggest no guitars were actually made after 1977 and guitars sold from 1978–1980 were old stock. The Jazzmaster was re-introduced in 1986 as a 1962 reissue model from Fender's Japanese factory. The American Vintage Series version was introduced in 1999. In 2007 Fender announced plans for a 'thin skin' Jazzmaster reissue with vintage nitrocellulose finish. The finish on the AVRI series is also nitro, but a 'thin skin' has a thinner nitro coat than usual (hence the name).
One of the big advantages as well as disadvantages, depending on what you like to hear, of the guitar is the string resonance appearing at several fret positions if they have a simple length relation with the string length behind the floating bridge (for instance 48:12 = 4:1). At those positions a high overtone rises in volume. This becomes more clear when the guitar sound is driven. However the overtone might sound odd, it still has a perfect harmonic relation, so is not out of tune related to the open string. For staccato playing it can be an annoying effect. Muting the string field behind the bridge with for instance a piece of velt solves this issue.
Influence
Fender intended the Jazzmaster to represent a solid body alternative to the hollow body archtop guitars that were then ubiquitous among Jazz guitarists. As the Telecaster and Stratocaster had done in other popular musical genres, Fender hoped to initiate a revolution in Jazz guitar, at the expense of their arch-rival Gibson. While the Jazzmaster never caught on among its intended audience, Jazz guitarists today are as likely to be playing a solid bodied Strat or Les Paul derivative as the large fully hollow "Jazz boxes" of yore.
Where Jazzmasters were most successful was in the burgeoning California-based surf music and instrumental rock scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Fender headquarters was located in Southern California, and Leo Fender himself actively solicited local players' input and guidance in designing the Jazzmasters followup, the Jaguar.
Jazzmasters, along with Jaguars and their imitators, fell out of fashion among players during the 1970s largely due to their "old-fashioned" appearance and sonic characteristics. The 70s rock sound meant "fat" humbucker tone and lots of sustain, so guitarists gravitated toward the Gibson Les Paul and its copies. The Jazzmaster's short sustain and warm piano-like tone was not favored. Fender continued to offer the Jazzmaster as part of its product line until 1980, however many collectors believe actual production ceased around 1976, with guitars sold after that period representing unsold inventory. Due to the unwanted, pawn-shop status of the guitars, young musicians were able to purchase the instruments very cheaply, obtaining the high quality guitars for little money.
Just as Fender discontinued the Jazzmaster, Tom Verlaine of Television and Elvis Costello started giving the guitar a cult following. Thus, they were later embraced by the American grunge and indie rock scene. Sonic Youth are notorious for the hoard of Jazzmasters they acquired starting around 1985 while the guitars were still affordable, and for their unique customization jobs (e.g. Lee Ranaldo's "Jazzblaster" with Fender Wide Range pickups). S.Y. were also famous for playing on the strings below the tailed bridge (near the tailpiece) to get church-bell-like tones; this is sometimes referred to as 3rd Bridge technique. Other bands, such as Yes picked behind the nut to achieve similar sounds (on other guitar models), but in a Guitar World interview, Sonic Youth rejected this practice as "art rock". Ranaldo even has a pickup mounted behind the bridge on one of his guitars. With the increasing visibility of old Jazzmasters, and the prices of collectible Telecasters and Stratocasters soaring out of sight in the 1990s, Jazzmasters became highly valuable. Thefts of vintage Jazzmasters from Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and The Raveonettes in recent years illustrate this. Sonic Youth had nine Jazzmasters stolen from them in July 1999, along with dozens of other items.
Robert Smith of The Cure used two Jazzmasters (which he named Black Torty & White Torty) for the majority of his band's early work. J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr is a noted Jazzmaster devotee, and as of 2007 Fender produces a signature J Mascis Jazzmaster model. Mascis uses a Tune-o-matic bridge, however. The stock Jazzmaster continues to have a cultlike following in the "shoegaze"/ "dream pop" community, which values the buzzing, otherworldly sounds made possible by Leo's bridge design. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine uses them as his main guitars, and bandmate Bilinda Butcher used them in addition to her Jaguars. A closeup picture of a Jazzmaster is featured as the cover of their critically-acclaimed album, Loveless (1991). One is also depicted on the cover of Band of Susans' Blessing And Curse EP (1987), although the band is more noted for their use of G&L guitars. Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo favors a Jazzmaster as well as other vintage Fender guitars, often playing behind-the-back solos in concert. Nels Cline, solo artist and current (2007) lead guitarist of Wilco, uses the Jazzmaster as his main guitar. J Mascis, Nels Cline, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth) all performed at the "Jazzmaster 50th Anniversary Concert" at the Knitting Factory in New York on September 12, 2008.
Although sometimes credited, Kurt Cobain never used a Jazzmaster.
Imitations and Reissues
There are a wide array of budget-priced overseas Jazzmaster imitations, particularly from the 1960s and '70s. Dillion, Yamaha, Framus, Teisco, Aria, Jansen, Harmony, National, and Demel are some of the companies who indulged, mainly to capitalize on the surf rock sound of the 1960s. Many of the modern copies replace the Jazzmaster's bridge and tremolo setup with a Stratocaster-derived assembly, altering the character of the guitar considerably but making it more palatable to players used to the Strat. The vintage copies are rising in price, with guitars costing under $100 as little as 5 years ago now selling for as much as $600. Fender eventually got the offset-waist body shape patented, putting an end to the 'copy era'.
Fender's Japanese facility is noted for the high quality of its offset-waist guitars. These MIJ or CIJ (Made or Crafted In Japan) reissues have been sporadically available outside Japan since the late 1980s, either from Japanese dealers willing to ship overseas, or from US dealers who have imported them. However, the "C.I.J." Jazzmasters are often criticized for essentially having narrow Stratocaster pickups inside the wide soapbar Jazzmaster housings, thus giving the guitar a Strat/Jaguar "honk" rather than the classic, mellow Jazzmaster sound. Since 1996, its Squier offshoot has manufactured a budget version called the Jagmaster, though its humbucker pickups and Stratocaster-style bridge give it a much different, "hard rock" sound.
In May 2008 Fender introduced the Classic Player Series Jazzmaster, which is made in Mexico and sells for under $1000. Fender have made numerous changes to the classic design, however, replacing the bridge with a Tune-o-matic type, giving it a 9.5" fretboard radius, moving the tremolo plate closer to the bridge and installing special designed P-90-type high output single coil pickups with a bar magnet at the base instead of the more Strat-like magnetized polepieces of the original pickups.
The same month saw also the introduction of the Elvis Costello Jazzmaster, the second signature Jazzmaster model made at the Corona facility - a faithful replication of Elvis Costello's 1960s Jazzmaster used during his 1977 debut album, My Aim is True. This signature Jazzmaster guitar features a solid walnut-stain finished alder body and a modified tremolo bridge for Costello's trademark "spy movie" sound.
Colors
The American Vintage Re-Issue (AVRI) Jazzmaster was produced in the following colors:
- 3-Color Sunburst
- Olympic White
- Black
- Ocean Turquoise
- Surf Green
- Ice Blue Metallic
Their pickguards come in Mint Green or Brown Shell colors.
Jazzmasters featured bound necks with block pearloid inlays from 1966 until the end of their original run in 1977; the headstocks were also larger ("CBS-style") in this era.
They have featured matching headstocks (headstocks painted the same color as the body) at several points throughout the guitar's history. Matched-headstock versions generally fetch a higher price and are currently not in production.
In July 2007, Fender released the J Mascis signature Jazzmaster, in honour of the Dinosaur Jr frontman. This model is much the same as previous Jazzmaster models aside from its Adjust-o-matic bridge (the Fender equivalent of the Gibson Tune-o-matic bridge), and its unusual purple sparkle finish. It is currently the only model of Jazzmaster in production with a matching headstock. In the past, a Nokie Edwards (of The Ventures) signature model was produced in Japan, without rhythm circuit. The Elvis Costello signature model has a natural brown finish and was released in 2008.
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