« Modern version of one of the other classic Fender »

The Jazzmaster was originally designed by Fender to be a more classy guitar and get into the market Gibson had. It was supposed to be for Jazz but it never really caught on with Jazz players. It was more popular in the California surf guitar scene. The original guitars had two Fender P-90 style pickups. This Blacktop version has a modern alnico magnet humbucker in the bridge and a Duncan Designed P-90 style Jazzmaster pickup in the neck. Unlike the Jaguar this guitar has the full Fender scale 25.5 inch neck with 21 medium jumbo frets. It has a normal 60s style headstock and the fretboard has a modern 9.5 inch radius. The body is made of alder and has a single tone and volume knob. Original Jazzmasters had a really complicated switching setup. They had many little toggle switches above the pickups to put them out of phase and what not. The electronic setup on these Blacktop series guitars is what you typically expect. Many people did not use any of those switches anyway so Fender just streamlined the design. It has a 3 way toggle pickup selector that goes left to right instead of up and down. This guitar comes with the old Jazzmaster tremolo system. Even back in the 60s Fender knew their tremolo systems were bad and they tried to fix them. Leo Fender believed that this new design was superior to previous designs since the bridge actually moved backwards and forwards along with the strings during tremolo use, thereby maintaining proper intonation even under extreme use, and preventing strings from binding. This floating bridge concept was also later used on the Fender Mustang. The floating tremolo mechanism also features a built-in tremolo lock, which helped the player preserve the guitar's tuning in the event of a string breakage and easing removal of the tremolo arm. This design was very complicated and was one reason these guitars never became popular. Surf guitar players used this tremolo system a bit but it never really caught on. This guitar can still get the jazzy sounds with the neck pickup. For a single coil design the neck pickup is surprisingly smooth. It is kind of the mix between a single coil and a humbucker. The bridge a rock machine. It has plenty of output and clarity. When you combine the pickups you get a great sound with the bite and clarity of the humbucker on top of the smooth fat bottom of the neck Jazzmaster pickup. If you are looking for a nice versatile Fender Jazzmaster this guitar is pretty decent.