Fender Jazz Bass Pre-CBS Custom Colou

This was the second version of the magnificent Jazz Bass and is displayed here in its full Custom Colour with matching headstock glory. The standard colours were available too of course, but they had the natural finished headstock.

The sometimes troublesome dual concentric controls were dumped for this simpler circuit of individual volumes with a master tone (smaller knob) on the bell plate. This also helped to create the sweet-spots where the blending of the two pickups seems to turn ‘hollow’ for a really pleasing and funky sound.

This Jazz bass has standard ‘elephant ears’ or ‘shamrock’ open gear tuners that operate backwards compared to modern day Fenders. Also some models are known to exist with cool oval blades, something that Fender used a little later but never caught on. We think Fender should bring them back as an alternative again. A truly gorgeous bass that’s still as good as anything on the market today.