Fender American Performer Jazzmaster
first play
FENDER AMERICAN PERFORMER JAZZMASTER & MUSTANG
18
GUITARIST SEPTEMBER 2019
as tools for the working musician. Now he
wants to offer some luxury. The brief is a
top-of-the-range looker that’ll hook the jazz
cats and studio aces.
Fresh from the drawing board, the
Jazzmaster is a handsome bugger and that’s
no lie. The only problem is, no-one actually
wants it. Where the Strat is lithe and
lightweight, the Jazzmaster is a bit more
cumbersome. The Strat has three pickups,
its wiring loom is beautifully simple and
the volume and tone controls fall easily
to hand. That low-profile ‘Synchronized’
vibrato unit is a work of genius. By way of
contrast, the Jazzmaster has two pickups, a
complicated control layout, not to mention
a spectacularly over-engineered vibrato
unit and bridge setup. If Leo thinks the
country jazz hotshots of the day are going to
trade in their big hollowbody guitars for his
latest flame, well, good luck with that.
Now, 60-odd years on, the Jazzmaster
is still going strong, of course. While it
never did capture the imagination of jazz
players, it’s a favourite of new wave and
alternative heroes such as Elvis Costello
and J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, both of whom
have Jazzmaster-based signature models.
This latest version, the American Performer
Jazzmaster, aims to widen the model’s
social circle with a simplified layout and
modern playing experience. Likewise, the
newest version of the much-loved Mustang,
a guitar that was never intended to be
anything more than a decent student guitar.
Both of these American Performer
models are built around an offset alder
chassis with a hard-wearing gloss
polyurethane finish. The maple necks are
bolt-on, of course, and while they share a
comfortable ‘Modern C’ profile, 241mm
(9.5-inch) radius and satin polyurethane
coating, their scale lengths differ. The
Jazzmaster is your classic 648mm (25.5-
inch) scale; the Mustang is short-scale
at 610mm (24 inches). Other similarities
include 22 jumbo frets (vintage and
reissue models only have 21) and a simple
wiring loom. You get a master volume,
‘Greasebucket’ tone and a three-way pickup
selector toggle switch.
Looking more closely at the Jazzmaster
you’ll discover that the big old floating
vibrato and rocking bridge chiselled into
vintage and reissue models ain’t there.
Fender has opted for a vintage Strat-style
vibrato for the American Performer. It’s
not the first time Fender has put out a
Jazzmaster in this format, but it still looks a
little odd. Not having the old-school floating
unit taking up all that body space leaves a
hell of a lot of naked real estate behind your
picking hand.
The American Performer Mustang has
the classic ’65-style slab body. Fender
didn’t add body contours to the Mustang
until 1969, along with ‘competition stripe’
graphics. The new model comes loaded
2. Both guitars feature
Yosemite single-
coil pickups in
different formats.
The Jazzmaster
has larger, brighter-
sounding models
than its sibling here
1. Classic and vintage
reissue Jazzmasters
come fitted with the
‘love it or loathe it’
floating vibrato, the
same unit fitted to
the Fender Jaguar.
The American
Performer has the
simpler and more
stable Strat-style
Synchronized vibrato.
Tuning stability here
is excellent
Running clean, you
can see why the
Jazzmaster’s big single
coils were so popular
in early 60s surf music
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GIT450.rev_fender.indd 18 8/8/19 5:08 PM