Guitar Info

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Unlike other James Trussart guitars this 2011 Trussart Steelmaster does not feature the hollow steel body for which his guitars are known. Instead, the body is of chambered pine with a steel cap recessed into the top. Seen front-on it has the appearance of a Trussart steel body guitar, while the distressed pine of the body is of a colour that compliments the metal. It makes for a very industrial-looking version of the Jazzmaster.

This guitar is currently for sale via Vintage & Rare, priced at €3185.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Thanks to Greg Cadman who posted this video clip on the Guitarz Facebook page.

Interesting guitars, custom-made by Waterstone Guitars they are styled after a Fender Jazzmaster/Jaguar design with reverse headstocks and with a Rickenbacker-style lightshow.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Currently listed on ebay Australia with a starting price of AU $2,500.00 (i.e. Australian dollars).

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Fender have just released the Modern Player Series comprising seven instruments (four guitars and three basses) which they describe as "Unconventional Takes on Classic Fender Designs".

A couple of these aren't entirely new. We've seen the Jaguar Bass before (nice to see it back though) and the Fender Telecaster Thinline Deluxe which combines elements from the Thinline and Deluxe Teles and is equipped with Fender MP-90 pickups.

I do like the new take on the Fender Telecaster Bass which now has TWO humbucking pickups, plus I'm sure a few here will enjoy the sleek stripped-back MP-90 equipped version of the Jaguar.

However, the most interesting design, as far as I'm concerned, is the Fender Marauder (pictured above) which is an almost new design, having been based loosely on a prototype circa 1965-66. The original prototype featured hidden pickups beneath the pickguard. The Modern Player Marauder, however, is equipped with a Jazzmaster neck pickup and a "volcanic-sounding" three-coil Fender Triplebucker bridge pickup. Most intriguing. I'm a little dismayed to see a Fender Strat-like tremolo system; I would have preferred to see a Jazzmaster or even Mustang trem. Oh well.

The Modern Player series are being marketed as "entry-level instruments of remarkable style and substance", although I'm sure they'll appeal to more seasoned players too. Priced at $399 for the Marauder, Telecaster Plus, Jaguar and Jaguar Bass, $449 for the Tele Thinline Deluxe, $499 for Jazz Bass, and $599 for Tele Bass, this range looks very promising.

And isn't it interesting that Fender could make a whole range of guitars WITHOUT yet another Stratocaster variant?

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Thomas writes:

I have a guitar that's a little weird, maybe even weird enough for your blog. It's a Telecaster/Jazzmaster hybrid, I built it myself (from parts). It has a swamp ash body with nitro paint job, a solid rosewood neck, Kluson lockhead machines, pickups by David Barfuss (the neck PU is a Fender Wide Range Humbucker-inspired design), a Fender bridge with compensated saddles by Wilkinson, and Fender Jazz Bass knobs. The guitar sounds phenomenal, and I'm very proud of it, obviously. What do you think?

Regards,
Thomas

Ah yes, don't these "Telemaster" guitars have something of a cult following? I've seen a number of variations on this theme on builder's forums, and I believe the Fender Custom Shop have produced the occasional example. Anyway, I reckon it looks to be a mighty fine guitar, Thomas, thanks for allowing us to show it here.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Here's another Fender guitar that is virtually unknown outside of Japan. It's a Crafted In Japan (CIJ) Fender Jazzmaster JM-CH mini with diminutive body, short scale, single pickup, and built-in amp and speaker. The amp has a three position switch for OFF, clean and distortion. The quality looks to be superb, as you would expect from Fender Japan; I hear that not for export models made solely for the Japanese market are among the best. This guitar would have been made 1995-1996.

This guitar is currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $468.

See also this Fender ST-Champ, which would appear to be the Stratocaster sibling to this mini Jazzmaster, and which we looked at back in February of this year.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Correct me if I'm wrong, Hag fans, but from what I can work out on the net, the above-pictured guitar is a Hagström Futurama Coronado Automatic from 1963. Apparently only 200 of this model were built for Ben Davis, owner of the Selmer company in London, and would have originally retailed (with case) at 77 guineas.

As you can see it takes its shape from the Fender Jazzmaster/Jaguar but the controls are very "European". The head too is very Fender-esque, but unlike any Fenders of the period the guitar is of through-neck construction.

This example is currently listed on eBay with a starting price of £600 and just over a day to go before the auction ends (as I type this).

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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This 2011 custom order Tokai AJG88 Silver Star really appeals to me as a stripped-back version of the Fender Jazzmaster; it has a basic layout with no fancy switches and no trem, but still manages to look über cool in this burgundy mist finish.

The spec is as follows:

BODY : Solid Alder
NECK : Maple
FINGERBOARD : Rosewood
FRETS : 22F (Regular)
BRIDGE : LS-VB Bridge LS-VT Tailpiece
NUT Width : Bone(42.0mm)
PICKUPS : PAF-Vintage MK2×2(Japan)
CONTROLS : 1V.,1T.3way Toggle SW
COLOR : burgundy mist metallic
WEIGHT : About 3500g

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Now here's a Höfner guitar that I've not seen before. And no wonder, it's what they call an "evaluation model". I think that means "prototype" to you and me.

Here's what the seller has to say about it:

Höfner HE179, Jazzmaster style evaluation model, mint condition, in original carton very rare. In 2003 Höfner designers came up with a jazzmaster styled model in very limited number (apprx 50) which were sent out to specific dealers for evaluation across the World. Perhaps not wishing to go up head to head with Fender on the similarities of the jazzmaster, Höfner decided not to proceed. [...] Maple body, with rich sunburst finish, Grover tuners, stop tailpiece and adjustable tuneomatic bridge, 3 way pickup switch, volume and 2 tone controls, fully bound neck and headstock. Pickups are a pair of stonking Gibson-style humbuckers (which look suspiciously like a set of Lindy Fralin Nickels), fully pole-adjustable, these produce a mighty punch. One of these guitars found its way to Oz last year and fetched over £1000 on Oz Ebay.

So, there you have it. Personally I wouldn't have thought that the body shape would put Höfner "head to head with Fender", as plenty of other manufacturers have borrowed this same body style. I'm also not too keen on the 3+3 headstock design with this body shape; it looks a tad incongruous.

Whatever, it would seem to be quite an individual guitar for the player who doesn't want to have the same axe as everyone else, and the Buy It Now price of £340 seems very reasonable.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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I bet you thought was going to be about one of those Rick Nielson multi-neck Cheap Shot guitars eh? I should coco! This is something I haven't come across too often before. Fender is a company I don't readily associate with doubleneck guitars. In fact I don't think I've knowingly seen any before - not that I've been looking, I have to add. The only Fenderish doubleneck I've happened across recently is the handsome, though not actually from Fender per se, creation from the skilful hands of young Bertram (with a little help from one of his woodworking associates). We have a fondness for the Fender Bass VI here in Guitarzland so it's an even bigger delight to find one Siametically co-joined to another of our favourites - the Fender Jazzmaster.

It's on the Austrian eBay site and I don't speak German. Maybe Bertram can help out with some of the details. As far as I can make out, it's a newish - 2010 - model, one-off, masterbuilt by Dennis Galuska (who's probably famous - sorry Den, not terrible au fait with the world of Lutherie) for the Frankfurt Musicmesse 2010 (that's a bit unfortunate isn't it, Musicmesse? Not really encouraging, eh? Probably means fair, exhibition or show or something similar. Maybe we should let them know. Might improve attendance a bit).

By the way, the body is lightweight ash with maple necks and rosewood fingerboards with Nitrocellulose lacquer - NOS (I thought that meant New Old Stock. Probably something else in German).

Amazingly enough (to me at least) it seems Yngwie Malmsteen also played a Fender double-neck 12/6 (probably very fast and very proficiently). That sounded a bit sarcastic didn't it? At least he's not Steve Vai. No, I didn't mean it. OK, YM isn't really my cup of tea, I'll admit, but until this week I'd have said the same about Steve Vai. Until... I Youtubed some of his performances and was a little surprised. Maybe it's a big act, I don't know, but he seems a nice guy, a great showman, a big ham, doesn't take himself too seriously (for a rock star) and plays with a ferocious passion. I'm not gonna rush out and buy his back catalogue but I don't mind anyone knowing I now have one of his tracks on my iPod - the Crazy Horses/Edgar Winter tinged-one-riff-all-the-way-through "Bad Horsie". It's only Rock N Roll etc... Stupid faces and all.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all. Taken my own sweet time to get back into second gear this year, sorry all.

David in Barcelona where the weather isn't too bad although it's a bit soon for the beach.

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Here's the second of Dillon's guitars:

The blue guitar here is a custom job, built by the good folks at Warmoth. It's their original split Jazzmaster design, named obviously for the 'split' pickguard. I've been a fan of the Fender body styles every since I started playing, but I felt like I needed something a little more radical; I already had a Strat and a Tele, so the logical progression was obviously the Jazzmaster shape. I put it together about a year ago now, and it's my pride and joy. It's got an HSH pickup configuration with a single-coil-sized humbucker in the middle, though I'm planning on swapping it out for a true single coil as soon as I get the chance. The neck is birdseye maple with a compound neck radius, which is amazingly comfortable and pretty nice to look at too.

It's an interesting variation on a classic design, and a fantastic looking guitar. Thanks for showing us!

I'd just like to ask, is the upper pickguard purely cosmetic, or is there routing in the body beneath for switches (should you want them)?

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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I started the month with a series of Electric 12-string guitars, and today would like to show you yet another example from more recent years. It's an ESP XJ-12 built in ESP's Japanese custom shop circa 2003 for the Japanese market. According to the listing on eBay, these guitars were sold in Japan at 200,000 Yen in 2003 (about $2,400).

The style is obviously Jazzmaster/Jaguar influenced; in fact it reminds me of Hohner's professional Hollywood series of several years ago. The headstock with its 4+8 tuner arrangement is an unusual but attractive feature.

This seller has several of these in different finishes; I found the gold sparkle edition, pictured above, particularly eye-catching. In the photo of the translucent green XJ-12 below we can see another interesting little detail in the Strat-type output socket inset into the edge of the guitar - especially useful if you like to have your guitar lead angled upwards and tucked behind your guitar strap.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Here's an email from Alan:

Hello from Washington DC USA.

Two slick videos I wanted to tell you about featuring Alvino Rey - a steel guitarist popular from the '40s thru the '60s. One (see above) features "Stringy", a singing puppet fronting for a vocalist going through a Sonovox. Bands of the 1940s routinely did these early "music videos" that ran in movie theaters.

The fun starts around the 0:42 sec mark.

The second shows Alvino on the "King Family" TV show of the 1960s - a very safe, family-friendly music variety show of that era. What makes it cool is seeing Alvino slinging a state of the art Fender solid-body instead of a nice, dignified archtop jazzbox; almost a blasphemy on a "family" TV show such as this.

In black and white it's hard to tell what the actual color of this guitar is. Since TV of that era couldn't handle *pure* white (it would blow the picture out), I want to pretend it's a Lake Placid Blue, an Ivory, or some kinda yellow.

Enjoy.
-AP

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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I like to post blog entries about interesting left-handed guitars - as and when I find them. After all, left-handed people deserve to have a better choice of interesting guitars. The off-the-shelf choices are so limited that some southpaws end up seeking out custom instruments.

This oil-finished left-handed Telemaster looks to be one such instrument, a self-build perhaps. The Telemaster - as its name suggests - is a hybrid of a Telecaster and a Jazzmaster. That is, a Telecaster with a Jazzmaster body. Or is that a Jazzmaster with Telecaster routing and hardware? It's actually a guitar with a bit of a cult following amongst self-builders, guitar projecteers and custom builders. A quick Google search will turn up loads of them!

This auction finishes in just a couple of hours, so if any interested lefties are reading, you might want to snap it up quickly.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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L.A.'s Dengue Fever - described by MOJO as playing "Cambodian party pop from the pre-Khmer Rouge swinging '60s" - are inviting readers to bestow a name upon the unique instrument pictured here. The strange amalgam of Fender Jazzmaster and Chapei Dong Veng (a traditional Cambodian two-stringed guitar) was created by friend of the band Mel Bergman and it now needs a name.

The reader who submits the best name will take home signed vinyl copies of DF's Escape and Venus albums, while a runner-up will win all four of the band's LPs on CD. The band will choose the winners.

Enter here

(Thanks to Mark Bannister for bringing this to my attention).

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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bertram


Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!