I have been a Fender player for over 40 years (gasp!). If you already own a strat and tele, you need this to complete the holy trinity of Fender guitars. This guitar is great for surf and other early 60's instrumental music. And in spite of everything you hear, you can get superb jazz tones out of it. Put 10 guage or heavier strings on it and you will be good to go. Don't fall for all the buzzstop garbage. The original design is fine. You don't need to mod it. Just be patient with setting up the bridge, read up on the idiosyncracies, and enjoy this wonderful guitar. Learn to use the tone/volume controls on this guitar. Unlike my other Fenders, I keep the tone control on this guitar dialed back quite a bit. It's a linear taper pot, so you have to set it to a lower value than you would on a Tele or a Strat. You will learn to love this guitar. It's not a do everything guitar, but it does what it does so well. The tremolo is also very smooth and sounds great.

I got this guitar about a year ago, and it has never let me down. I play mostly rock/alternative music, and "Bradley" is my favorite guitar I own. My set up is a Marshall JCM 900, with a boss pedal board, and this guitar. It sounds simply amazing. If your on the fence about getting this guitar its definetly worth the money, (and in my case the wait) The neck feels like dream, and the pickups are their own custom fender single coils. The body is rock solid, and the electronics on it are fool proof. Honestly if you are looking for something thats a bit more unique but want that fender quality this is definetly the guitar for you. Any style of music, rock, jazz, indie, ska, punk... you name it. BUY THIS GUITAR!!

I own a number of guitars. My wife says too many. Anyway, I decided to buy the '62 Jazzmaster to add to my collection. Wow! Do I like this quitar. It is the most versitle guitar I own. It can sound like a Strat, or like a Tele or just about anything else. The neck is about the same width as a tele, which I like, since I finger pick. The single coil pickups are subject to hum if you are practicing in close proximity to your amp. I never have run this guitar through any of my pedals, so I can't speak for that. You can not go wrong with the Vintage '62 Jazzmaster. It is a great guitar.

My first 'real' guitar was a '66 Jazzmaster so I had to get one of these recently. I think it took me 2 weeks before I got the thing set-up right, here's what you have to do; 1) Peel all the blue plastic protective coating off everything- pickguard to case locks. 2) set pickups for minimal clearence at all string fret positions 3) with bridge barrels set low and neutral set bridge height, no fret buzzes in any positions 4) Fine-tune individual bridge barrel height. No barrel should be too high or low or hardware will interfere with the string. 5) set sting harmonics bt adjusting barrel screw length. and 6) replace strings. What you have to go thru to play this thing is an embarrasment to Fender- there should be better set-up at delivery it's just too much for most guitar players to deal with and expect good results.

The jazzmaster is infinately adjustable but once you get it right the reward is awesome tone, sustain, and playability. The serial-parallel switch gives you some incredable tones from clear surf tones to warm blues to smooth jazz to biting distortions. Awesome and nothing like it anywhere, perhaps the perfect electric guitar.

I've had this guitar for about six months. It fulfills everything that I want or need in a guitar. It's the only thing that I play now. It's got a beautiful unplugged tone, especially with heavier strings. I use a .012 set and the guitar really comes alive. It's a very comfortable axe to play, bigger than a strat but nice if you're a big person like me. It's not light, but not as heavy as a Les Paul or something. The neck is extremely comfortable; it's got small frets and a really round radius. If you're used to wide flat fingerboards then you may not like this one. Also if you do a lot of heavy string bending you may need to set the action higher, because of the neck radius. I was able to get the action extremely low. The pickups are wonderful. The rhythm circuit can be very useful once you get used to it. It's a very *subtle* guitar, although you can also wail on it. I play through a Roland JC-120 which really brings out the nuances of any guitar, and this one sounds *amazing* through it. Very quiet--but invest in a good cable. I switched out the bridge for a mustang bridge, like many people do, and I would recommend it. Other than that, I see no reason to change anything. Did I mention this guitar is beautiful? I get compliments on it constantly. I haven't tried the new Japanese ones that were released recently, I hear they're good, but if you have the bread I cannot recommend this guitar highly enough!