The Jazzmaster, introduced in late
1957, was envisioned as
Fender's
top-of-the-line electric guitar. Despite its name,
jazz players never flocked to it, and it found its strongest adherents instead among the
punk,
new wave and
avant-garde players who started picking them up in
pawn shops right around the time Fender decided to stop making them in the early 1980s. They're best known as the signature instrument behind
surf music and much of
New York's
punk music.
What differentiates the Jazzmasters from other Fenders is the
bridge and the
circuitry, which gives the instrument its characteristic hollow, twangy sound.
(For examples, listen to: "
Walk Don't Run," by
The Ventures,
Zoot Horn Rollo's playing on
Captain Beefheart's "
Trout Mask Replica,
Television's "
Marquee Moon," (especially the title song), or the entire "
Psychic Hearts"
LP by
Sonic Youth's
Thurston Moore.)
Many players, upon buying a Jazzmaster, often replace the
bridge with one from a
Fender Mustang. The reason: On a JM bridge, the strings run at a shallow angle over
bridge saddles that resemble screw threads, complete with sharp edges. The result is that even moderately hard playing causes the strings to jump out of the saddles or break. The Mustang saddles have deeper grooves and the barrels of the saddles are unthreaded. (See
http://www.dreamwater.net/albatross/mods.html for a photo of both, side by side, to see what we're talking about.)
The shallow angle of the strings over the bridge gives the guitar less sustain than, say, a
Les Paul or a
Stratocaster, where the strings are pulled over the bridge at a sharp angle. However, it does make the guitar quite "twangy," which made it a favorite among surf-rockers. Jazzmasters feature prominently on
Beach Boys and
Ventures LPs.
Company founder and resident genius
Leo Fender intended the Jazzmaster to replace his then-top-of-the-line
Strat. It didn't happen, though. By
1982, Fender stopped making them in the U.S. Fender
Japan, however, began reissuing the
1962 model in
1986; Fender U.S. began reissuing the '62 model in the States in
1999.
The
consensus of reviews says that the '62 reissue is faithful to the original, in finish (it is covered in the
nitrocellulose lacquer that was then in use, and should age like a
vintage guitar), in sound (the pick-ups and circuitry are the same) and in playability (the bridge is the same problematic Jazzmaster bridge.)
The instrument owes part of its sound to the pickups and wiring arrangement that were newly designed for it. Unlike the Strat, the Jazzmaster has two wider "soap bar" pickups, which cover more string length and therefore have a fuller sound. The circuitry allows for two different tone settings, which are selected by a small switch mounted on the
pickguard above the neck. The "rhythm" circuit affects the neck pickup, while the "lead" circuit has a three-way
toggle switch that selects either pickup alone or both of them together.
The bigger pickups, while picking up more of the steel strings, also picked up more hum - a constant bane of
single coil pickups. To correct this, the pickups were of opposite polarity, so that when both of them were selected, they cancelled the hum, effectively turning both pickups into one large
humbucking pickup.
Resources:
http://www.geocities.com/vginfo/jazzma58.html - Photos of the inside of a '58 Jazzmaster.
http://www.webrocker.de/jaguar/jazzmaster.htm - Old Fender Jazzmaster ads
http://www.fender.com/misc/jazzjag/ - "Great Recorded Moments in Jazzmaster and Jaguar History" from Fender's site. Two of the 13 LPs listed are
Mike Watt records featuring
Nels Cline's playing