It's been a while since I had a new guitar day, or made a significant gear purchase, but I've been wanting to break my offset guitar virginity for so long now and thought that with so many options on the market right now, this would be the perfect time, hence my earlier thread seeking the advice of you jazzmaster connoisseurs! You guys pointed me in the perfect direction and I am extremely happy with my choice. Originally I wasn't taken with the binded neck on the AO line, but loved the rest of the spec. I realised that this was a pretty lame reason to not go with that model so I sucked it up and went for it. In fact, these guitars were out of stock everywhere with a 4-6 month lead time, but I got very lucky when 1 suddenly appeared on the guitar guitar site on Friday morning!.. so I pounced on it and added next day, Saturday delivery.
Here are my initial thoughts..
It looks classy as fuck. Absolutely gorgeous to behold, and the binding is already growing on me. I just wish it was aged slightly to match the off-white plastics on the rest of the guitar. Hopefully it'll yellow with age.
This guitar feels great to play and has a very resonant, lively tone even unplugged.
Fit and finish is stellar, and it’s pretty light all things
considered.. (8lbs I believe). The neck carve is very comfortable.. in my primitive way, I'd call it a "medium" thickness. I usually play nocaster type telecasters or an old 1949 es125 which has my favourite neck of all time. Both are very thick. This jazzmaster neck isn't in that same ballpark, but it's reassuringly sturdy with a nice, natural taper.
My only gripe is the trem system. The bar will not stay in place at all
and falls out with any movement. It’s also squeaky and rattly/clunky.
I’ve already ordered the staytrem and staytrem bridge so am really
looking forward to fitting those.
Also, although I’m enjoying the
tone, it’s is extremely bright and I’m running my tone control halfway
down. The bridge pickup is a bit weak sounding too and I’ve spent a good
while tweaking the pickup heights and the overall setup. I’m going to
patiently wait for December when mojo is taking on new orders again, and
I’ll follow
@GavRichList
advice and grab myself the jazzmaster set with overwound bridge.
Hopefully this will sort the balance out a bit and thicken the tone a
tad.I'm already a huge fan of the rhythm circuit and can see this will be extremely useful for me. I play all sorts of styles of music and my main gig is in a roots/swing/country/blues band.. think Tom Waits/Marc Ribot mixed with George Barnes, Django and Charlie Christian style I guess would be an approximation. But I also play a lot of contemporary music, Slint, Radiohead, Grizzly Bear, Mars Volta, Kendrick Lamar to name a few.
This guitar will give me the whole range with ease.. Bill Frisell one minute, Omar Rodriguez the next and all points in between.
Thanks to everyone for your advice and guidance on this, it’s
been massively appreciated and I’m well chuffed with my first offset
guitar!
Anyway,
pictures speak a thousand words so here’s a little video I filmed upon
taking the guitar out of its case. Towards the end I use the trem, which sounds great, but it's extremely loose once you use it/dislodge it from it's position, and then it'll just swing around and fall out eventually.
(Excuse the plastic coverings and
stickers still being on the guitar!)
Cheers,
Alex
Comments
Regarding the trem bar falling out, you really have to push it in hard until it clicks in. Dont be afraid to really put your weight behind it and push it in. I've never had a trem unit where it falls out, not even the squier ones. But the stay trem will be an improvement regardless.
The mojo pickups with the overwound are amazing. The Jazzmaster will always be bright with the 1 meg pots, but that overwound bridge gives it some extra grunt.
Enjoy!
I have pushed, and pushed on the arm, putting quite a lot of pressure on it and still it’s loose. If I push and turn at the same time it stays momentarily but as soon as I use it, it flops back down again. I’ll open it up and see what’s going on under the plate.
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're trem, when I first got my Yamaha Pacifica 611 VFM I also thought the trem was loose, until I realised it had a small hexkey adjustment to tighten it.
Thanks mate, I appreciate that. Yeah it's the built in reverb and trem in my 64’ Princeton Reverb .. all original aside from the speaker. I replaced the old Oxford speaker with an Eminence Alessandro GA10-SA64.
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ps. Now I understand why they call it the Jazz master.
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