Jazzmaster Jam

In the next few weeks, I'll be showing pictures, clips, and descriptions of a dozen Jazzmaster pickups. I'm not trying to find the best pickup. All of these pickups are worthy of consideration. However, different players have different needs. Hopefully, the information in this blog will give you some help in deciding how to spend your cash. The obvious question is, "Why would someone do this, other than the obvious response of, 'Utter lunacy?'"

Same as most guitarists, I'm always in search of the elusive, ever-changing tone. Not just a sound, but sound that makes you sit up & take notice. So, I've got an ever changing collection of guitars, amps, pedals, and so on. But just getting a new piece of kit doesn't end the quest for tone. That's when I take an off-the-rack instrument and make it my own.

As a big surf fan, I've loved Jazzmasters for a long time. This past May, I got a brand new, ice blue American Vintage '62 Jazzmaster Reissue. Before I even received the guitar, I knew one change I would make already: the mint green pickguard had to go, to be replaced by the much-more-stylish tortoiseshell. A good start, but I needed to do more.

Within a month, I had decided I needed new pickups. Everything else I was very happy with. And, honestly, I wasn't unhappy with the stock pickups -- I just wanted more. More nuance, more harmonics, more output, and, not to be forgotten, more solder fumes!

In the past, I'd owned a Japanese Jazzmaster, which the previous owner had pretty heavily modded -- all new pots, switches and caps, and a set of Seymour Duncan pickups. I didn't really like the pickups (and the guitar was good, but not great, for me) so I wasn't too interested in another set of Duncans.

Over at the Jazzmaster & Jaguar forum on the Fender Discussion Page, I had already learned a great deal about Jazzmasters. The two pickup makers, other than Seymour, who got good reviews were Jason Lollar & Curtis Novak. I'd already used several other Lollars in various guitars, and knew that they were incredible pickups. But Novak was unknown to me, and he had some really interesting variations on the basic JM pickup. So I emailed Curtis.

We talked a bit, back & forth. He was, like so many folks creating custom musical equipment, obviously passionate about his work, and willing to bend over backwards to help. I ordered a vintage-style neck pickup and a bridge pickup based on a P-90.

The pickups arrived quickly, and I popped them in. I immediately really liked the neck pickup, but didn't jibe with the bridge. So, I emailed Curtis, and he offered to take a few thousand winds off, which would give the pickup a clearer, less overpowering (to my ears) tone. We talked some more, and Curtis offered to send me several different bridge pickups, and let me choose which one I wanted to keep, and I'd send the rest back. How could I say no?

In the meantime, curiosity had gotten the best of me, and I grabbed a set of Lollar JM pickups. I liked those a lot, too.

Well, Curtis sends me email, listing a half dozen or so pickups, and, before I get a chance to tell him which I want to choose from, he sends them all along.

So here I am, with a dozen JM pickups -- 7 bridge pickups from Curtis, a Novak neck, a set of Lollars, and the stock AVRI pickups. I figure, this is a great opportunity! I'll do a Jazzmaster pickup shootout. Not liking the idea of a "shootout," I decide -- it's a jam.

So, here I am. I've got the pickups, I've got the guitar, and I've got a soldering iron -- and I'm not afraid to use it!