In 1958, Fender were riding high in the electric guitar market. The Telecaster had established their reputation, and the Stratocaster, launched in 1954, had taken the world by storm. The Jazzmaster, which launched that year, was Fender's most expensive offering, designed to take market share from Gibson's hollow body jazz guitars, just as the Strat and Tele had done so succesfully in other markets.
Fender Jazzmaster Features
The Jazzmaster's offset waist body looks as radical and unusual today as it did in 1958, unlike the Strat, which, whilst sensational at launch, is so commonplace today that it's the shape most people think of when they imagine an electric guitar. The Jazzmaster differed from Fender's other guitars in many of its features, not least the pickups.
Where the Stratocaster had 3 single coil pickups, the Jazzmaster returned to a two pickup configuration, but with pickups unlike those seen on any other Fender. The pickups have a wide and flat coil where Strat and Tele pickups have a taller, thinner winding. This gives the Jazzmaster a warm, mellow, plummy tone which compares well with a Gibson mini humbucker, despite being single coil.
The Jazzmaster's electronics, too, are unusual; there are single tone and volume knobs, and a 3 way toggle switch for front, rear or both pickups. This is all normal enough, but there is also a secondary set of controls on the top plate, with a slider switch to select what are various known as the "rhythm controls" or the "jazz controls".
These give a somewhat different tone to the standard, with more muted treble. Finally, the Jazzmaster's tremolo unit is very unusual; the "Floating Remote Tremolo" consists of a bridge with fully adjustable saddles which is operated by a spring system within the body. The tremolo arm is not attached to the bridge at all, but disappears into the body on the string anchoring plate.
When the arm is moved, the bridge moves back and forth beneath the strings, rather than stretching them as a Stratocaster tremolo does. This results in a system which is capable of great subtlety, and has good tuning stability. You can't perform extreme divebombs, but that's not what this guitar is for.
Popularity Through the Years
Despite its mellow sound, which is especially well suited to clean tones, the Jazzmaster was not a hit with jazz musicians in its early years. It was adopted more enthusiastically, however, by surf bands, who employed its twangier bridge pickup tone to great effect. With artists like The Ventures and The Fireballs using the guitar, Leo Fender began work on a guitar even more suited to that genre, the Jaguar.
The Jazzmaster was finally considered financially unviable and discontinued in 1980, though some sources suggest that none had been built since 1977, and sales since then had been of existing stock. The low second hand cost of the unpopular Jazzmaster began to find it a new market, however. Indie rock musicians were always looking for different tones, unusual looking guitars, and most of all, a bargain.
The Cure, Television and Elvis Costello all began to give the Jazzmaster a higher profile, whilst the likes of Dinosaur Jnr, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine all valued the Jazzmaster's ability to produce abundant feedback.
By the 1990s, the burgeoning popularity of the Jazzmaster with those in search of something a little different to the ubiquitous Strat encourage Fender to re-release it, and today, their product range includes no less than 5 Jazzmasters, including two signature models. Even the budget Squier range includes a Jazzmaster model, albeit without the complicated electronics or the floating remote tremolo, which is quite a change for what was once Fender's most expensive model.
