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Construction: Very good, neck is really amazing, the best thing on the guitar really. Fretwork is very nice as well. I personally don’t love Jumbo frets, nor do I love a 7.5″ radius, however it does seem to work. I didn’t find a bad fret on this, and playability was very good. Not the best, but still very nice.

Pickups: I bought the guitar used, the person I bought it from swapped out the pickups with some Seymour Duncans. He also sent me the pickups that came with the guitar. Now here’s the deal, I have no idea if these are really the pickups that came with the JM Model or are some soapbars that normally come in MIJ Jazzmasters and the guy just kept the JM ones and sent me these instead. But these are not close to vintage style soapbars, these are single coils in a soapbar casing. Vintage soaps are wound short and wide, these are wound exactly like a strat single coil. Someone else would have to confirm the pickups, as I’m not in the position to validate that these are %100 stock. If they are stock then the company is misleading in stating that these are “Special Design” MIJ single-coil Jazzmaster pickups. Unless “Special Design” means Stratocaster Single Coils. Anyways the Seymour’s sound very good in it, and the guitar sounds and plays very nice.

Tremolo w/ Adjust-o-matic: Vibrato bar is nice works well with the bridge as long as you have 10′s on. Once I put 11′s I am having a problem intonating the A string by about 3 cents. Which is pretty annoying, however you really can’t tell. If you’re picky and I usually am it might really piss you off, but for this instance it just annoys me that I can’t get it exact, but because I can’t notice it audibly I’m not too irritated. This does show a little slack in craftsmanship though. I also prefer a Tune-o-matic over an adjust-o-matic because there is a little gap in the way the bridge sits on the threaded posts. The bridge will actually move a little bit in its seat. I don’t really see what has been re-enforced about the “tremolo” arm or seating. It looks exactly the same as all the other’s. Perhaps I’m missing it though.

Overall: You can walk into a GC and be able to get this for about $730 if not less (once they have them in stock). That is exactly what this guitar is worth. In my opinion it plays much better than an AVRI or even a vintage Jazzmaster. It is also my opinion that the bridge is an improvement over the vintage or RI’s. The neck is really very good, and the satin has a good feel. The construction honestly seemed to be better than a lot of Fenders that I’ve seen lately, even with its flaws. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I’ll be more than happy to answer them.

Cheers!!!

I’m actually trying to get one of these in for review (as Mascis is one of my favorite guitar players of all time,) but so far Fender doesn’t want to play with small frys like myself ;)

I’ll see what I can do though.

I’ll keep an eye out for a review though… or try to get my hands on one for a full review right here on EGR.

Ciao!

Has anybody played one of these yet? What did they think? I’ve been looking all over on the net for a review but can’t find one anywhere.

Can’t wait to get my hands on one and make some noise!!!

I would guess that no matter how much respect players of our age may have for the old guard (Clapton, Beck, what have you,) now that the baby boomers (as we call ‘em in the States) are getting too old to really be buying up instruments, signature models are going to be aimed squarely at you and me.

Should be fun… if a little dangerous for my pocket book.

I was lucky enough to see Dinosaur Jr when they were touring for their Green Mind release, and the show was phenomenal.

That was probably 15 years ago, but I’m literally getting tingles down my spine remembering their final encore…

FREAK SCENE.

Fucking fantastic…