Fender Vintera '60s Jazzmaster Modified

review
FENDER VINTERA SERIES FENDER VINTERA SERIES
94
Guitarist october 2019
style Adjusto-matic bridge – replacing
the vintage-style ‘floating’ bridge of the
vintage model – and the vibrato is placed
a little closer to it than original vintage.
“This increases the string-break angle for
more stable string placement, and reduces
the string length behind the bridge to
lessen or eliminate unwanted sympathetic
vibrations,” says Fender.
Again, we just have pau ferro fingerboards
(dot inlaid only), and while the Modified
version comes in just two colours, the
Sunburst we see here and Surf Green, the
vintage version comes in Ice Blue Metallic
and Olympic White with colour-matched
headstocks – they’re lookers for sure.
Build
If the Classics and Classic Players have
rightfully achieved a reputation for
affordable quality, it’s no different here.
They’re pretty tidy. From the weights to the
fretwork – which uses medium jumbo wire,
“the perfect marriage between small vintage
frets and modern jumbo,” says Fender –
there is a consistency and ‘perfectly good
enough’ level to these guitars.
There’s a strong NOS vibe, too: the
finishes and hardware gleam and shine,
although all three have accurately toned
neck finishes with silky smooth satin backs.
Our Strat swaps bright white plastic parts
for a three-ply mint green scratchplate and
aged white pickup covers and knobs.
There are identifiers of price-point
and modern production, though. The
attractively striped pau ferro ’boards on
the Strat and Jazzmaster don’t look quite
right if the deep dark chocolate of rosewood
is burned into your memory. The Strat’s
vibrato uses a die-cast block, not steel, with
narrow string spacing and plated saddles.
PICKUP CHOICES
Fender’s pickup guru Tim Shaw talks
us through the Vintera models’ units
“As with the American Original Series,
Vintera is a ‘greatest hits of the periods’, so
we selected features in a broad-brush way,”
explains Fender’s chief engineer, Tim Shaw.
“The Classic Player models, for example,
didn’t have a unified focus – like the Mexican
Standard models, they evolved over time and
guitar A didn’t necessarily have anything in
common with the specs for guitar B. As with
American Professional, American Performer
and the Mexican Players [which replaced the
Standards], the Vintera models have what’s
typically called Line Logic, or this unified
focus, but that also means they make sense
to the rest of us as well!”
Each model’s pickup set shoots for “era-
specific magnet, wire and winding spec”, adds
Tim. “The pickups were designed and voiced
in sets and each pickup is voiced for the
instrument, for the period and for position.”
The 50s-era Strat pickups employ various
period-specific features such as staggered
Alnico V magnet sets with individual bevelled
magnets: “The original stagger was developed
for even output with the original heavy strings
and helps create the classic Strat ‘chime’
as its distinctive magnetic field affects the
strings as a group,” says Tim. “50s pickups
also used Formvar-coated wire. Formvar has
the thickest coating of all Fender’s magnet
wires and gives this pickup series the classic
mid-50s bright and open voice. The ’50s Strat
set is wound and calibrated for each position;
middle pickup is RWRP.”
The same magnets and wire as the 50s
Strat set are used on the Modified version
“but wound slightly hotter overall”, says Tim.
“60s Strat pickups still used Alnico V
magnets, and their magnets were bevelled
early in the decade, but we chose to use the
non-bevelled versions here. The original 50s
magnet stagger was still used but the coating
on the magnet wire was changed to plain
enamel, which was thinner than Formvar. The
sound is tighter and more focused than the
’50s Strat pickups.” Again, the ’60s Strat set
is wound and calibrated for each position;
middle pickup is RWRP.
“The basic core assemblies – magnets
and wire – are the same on both sets of
Jazzmasters,” says Tim. “These are the
traditional size and height with Alnico V
magnets. The vintage unmodified ones
are essentially the same as other stock
Jazzmaster pickups. The modified versions
have about five per cent and 10 per cent more
wire on them [neck and bridge] respectively.”
The ’50s Modified Tele, however, mixes
things up a bit: “The Classic Player Baja
Tele had a Twisted Tele neck pickup, which
is about 2.5mm taller than a traditional Tele
neck pickup. This was originally developed
by Alan Hamel in the Custom Shop, and I use
this architecture a lot for Tele neck pickups.
It uses Alnico V magnets, and this version was
wound with 42-gauge instead of the 43-gauge
you’d find on a traditional Tele neck pickup.
You can get away with this because the taller
magnets are more powerful and you can get a
fair bit of 42-gauge on the taller bobbin. It has
a nominal DCR of 6kohms. Its bridge pickup
was a flat-top Tele bridge pickup with Alnico V
magnets, wound with 43-gauge wire. The DCR
here is about 9k.”
Fender no longer uses rosewood
fi ngerboards on its Mexican-made
guitars. The pau ferro on the ’50s
Strat Modifi ed here is attractively
striped, too. Fretwire gauge on all our
Modifi ed models is medium jumbo;
’board radius is 241mm (9.5 inches)
These ’60s-era single coils use
period-correct plain enamel
wire and unbevelled Alnico V
magnets. Note the vintage-
style magnet stagger
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GIT451.rev_fender.indd 94 05/09/2019 17:34