Originally debuted in 1958 geared towards jazz guitarists, the Fender Jazzmaster soon earned a new spot among “surf rock” guitarists and currently, indie rock guitarists. However, around 1970 the guitar took a nose-dive in sails and the line was terminated. This seemed to be the end for the Fender Jazzmaster, but then something amazing happened. Various bands and musicians started picking up the Jazzmaster and using it in their performances, such as Elvis Costello, the group Sonic Youth, and Robert Smith of the Cure. This lead to the creation of a very fast growing cult following. Due to this new-found popularity, the market was soon saturated with Jazzmaster copies from all types of companies until the duplication was halted by Fender obtaining a copyright on the guitar's characteristic body. Finally, in May of 2008, Fender issued their own replication of the Jazzmaster, the Classic Player Series Jazzmaster, which although features a great deal of similarities to the original, is still very different in many aspects.
The most commonly used Jazzmaster today is a re-issue, the American Vintage '62 Jazzmaster. These guitars, although close to the original, still maintain a few key differences. The primary features of the '62 re-issue Jazzmaster are its 21 vintage frets, rosewood fretboard, maple neck, alder body, C shape neck, 2 single coil pickups, and floating tremelo. The American Vintage '62 Jazzmaster also comes in a variety of colors, such as 3-color sunbburst, olympic white, and black.
Although the Fender Jazzmaster can be utilized to play pretty much any style of music you could want, it truly excels at playing clean and undistorted. Due to its original marketing towards jazz musicians, the Jazzmaster possesses a much mellower and softer tone than most other guitars, as well as a very clean and unclipped sound. If you do chose to use distortion, be careful of your volume though, because the Jazzmaster was not designed to play very loudly, and certainly not very loudly with distortion. However, some people actually like the “muddy” sound the guitar produces when you try to use distortion with it, and some even prefer that to the clean sound. Overall though, the guitar is best suited towards jazz, “surf rock”, or indie rock, styles that generally feature a cleaner, less processed sound.
The Fender Jazzmaster is no doubt a piece of history, but also for a reason much greater than its use by famous musicians. The Fender Jazzmaster became so popular because of how superb it was and that is why it continues to be sought after, even though so many years have passed.
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