Wanted to have something different and see how my setup interacted with Jazzmaster style pickups as opposed to the several other guitars I have owned with Humbuckers, and I have ALWAYS ALWAYS wanted a Jazzmaster. They're just so neat looking to me for some reason. Had the J Mascis Jazzmaster a few months back but had to sell it because I needed food and went over my head, so I was definitely wanting a Jazzmaster again.
Okay, onto the review:
The pickups themselves are really articulate and clear. A little on the bright side, but I expected that since they were single coils and not humbuckers. I seemed to play mostly in the neck position tonight, but I found myself switching back and forth as well. In the bridge I definitely rolled some tone and high end off, it just seemed way too bright for me but I like dark guitar tones anyways.
I used the tone circuit a few times, especially when I was using my Sovtek Muff, to go from a more overdrive type sound to full blast wall of sound. I didn't care for the serious drop in volume when rolling back the volume on the circuit. The volume seems to go wayyy too fast. But other than that its a pretty neat little circuit, especially if you don't feel like fidgeting around adjusting the pickup selector and tone/volume knobs all the time.
The construction of this guitar is spot on. I took it out of the box and was really taken back by how well crafted the guitar is. It is easily as well built as my MIM Jaguar, if not a little bit better. No rough frets, no paint blemishes that I noticed, nice smooth neck. Tore off the sticky plastic cover on the pickguard and immediately swapped the stock strings for 10's, just because I'm used to thicker strings. I did notice that the first three frets had a little bit of rust on them, but that's nothing a bit of 0000 steel wool can't fix. The rest of the guitar is solid. It doesn't feel like a toy. It's not quite as heavy as my Jaguar, but still has some weight to it which is really nice. I adjusted the string height just a tad, because it looked like the strings would and could have flopped pretty easily at the height it came to me in the box.
As far as quality of parts, I think the only thing I would end up replacing is the trem bar. It doesn't stay in very well and feels a little cheap. I might also end up replacing the pickguard for something a little more subtle like black or mint. I was VERY surprised with how well the guitar stays in tune with the non-locking tuners. I have this weird idea in my head that if tuners don't lock, the strings will automatically slip and go to shit way more quickly than locking tuners. I don't think I will heavily use the trem bar, however, just because I did for about 5 minutes and it kind of went out of tune. I kind of expected that though.
After I swapped strings I brought it up stairs and played it through the pedalboard I posted yesterday, into my Sunn Sceptre. It was awesome. A whole different level of clarity and articulation compared to humbuckers. While I love 'buckers for bringing the heavy, this brought heavy in a whole new way.
Ended up unplugging myself from the big board, and put together a small board (the one that I posted the other day) with just my Sovtek Muff and DMM. I was floored. Never had I been so happy with a setup.
I unplugged from that, and just out of curiosity took the Muff off and replaced it with a looper that I built that has 2 bypass loops, a Klon Buffer, and a SHO clean boost at the end. I plugged the DMM into the second loop adjusted for unity gain, and had at it. Using the SHO I boosted the Sunn Sceptre into a chunky overdrive and then fed the DMM into it. It sounded INCREDIBLE, I could seriously use that setup every day and NOT be sick of it ever. Heavy, angelic, soft, beautiful. Nuts.
FUZZLESS??
This guitar is great, and a serious value for the money. I really don't have any complaints about the guitar other than the awful tortoise impersonation on the pickguard. It was well worth the money and I don't regret it at all. The only thing I might do in the next few weeks is brush the first three frets with super fine steel wool to remove the surface rust.
In other words, buy one.
