Which Jazzmaster for a fussy fecker?

brooom

to be honest I remember my original 1965 being quite polite in terms of sound.

excuse the shitty playing and recording quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0ZLD9EpWp4

meltedbuzzbox

ThePrettyDamned said:

If you have it set up by someone who knows what they're doing, you really won't need a mastery or mustang bridge, though they have their own aesthetic style. I use a normal, cheap JM bridge and it holds tuning perfectly, but the neck did need a shim (the same would be true for a mustang bridge or mastery I think).

You can't go much wrong though. I think the sound comes partly from the low break angle and sympathetic sounds from behind the bridge. Nice pickups etc are great, but I've played some cheaper ones and they were pretty great. 

Budget for a good setup! 

Mastery advise you remove any shims and run their bridge as close to the body as you can.

The issue with the stock bridge isn't to do with tuning, its that the strings suffer from saddle pop.

The mastery and staytrem both fix that issue, they also give a decent string spacing (unlike the stock mustang bridge)

The mastery changes the attack curve of the note and gives a fuller sound to the ringing note for longer.
It also does some other voodoo magic that sounds awesome.

Yes you can make a stock bridge work, usually with shimming,  filed grooves and loctite.
However, they always sound better with a staytrem or a mastery (in my opinion,  especially the mastery ).

As for pickups, nobody makes a better sounding set than mojo.