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FENDER® INTRODUCES 50th ANNIVERSARY ®

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Jan. 14, 2010) – To celebrate 50 years of its groundbreaking and ubiquitous Jazz , Fender introduces the limited edition 50th Anniversary Jazz Bass. The instrument stands out distinctively among Fender’s many variations on the Jazz Bass in that it brings design elements from several important periods in the model’s history together in one beautiful new bass guitar.

Introduced in 1960 as a deluxe model, the Jazz Bass was designed as a sleek “sports” car to complement the Precision Bass’s “muscle” car. With its comfortably-slim neck, sultry offset waist and guttural midrange growl, the Jazz Bass quickly became prized on stages and in studios worldwide for its smooth feel and broad tonal versatility. As such, it is one of the most successful bass —if not the most successful bass guitar—of all time.

Although it has flourished for half a century now remarkably unchanged from its original incarnation, the Jazz Bass has undergone several noteworthy design improvements and refinements throughout its history, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. In celebration of the instrument’s remarkable 50 years on the scene, several of these features are brought together in the 50th Anniversary Jazz Bass. These include:

• ’60s-era nitrocellulose finish in striking Candy Apple Red, logo, chrome pickup/bridge covers, “C” neck shape and white Pearloid block inlays. • ’70s-era bridge pickup placement and bass-side thumb rest. • Modern-era tuning machines, high-mass vintage-style bridge and Posiflex® neck support rods.

The Jazz Bass is now poised to begin its second 50 years as the number-one bass of choice for discerning players—novices and seasoned professionals alike—worldwide. Fender will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Jazz Bass throughout 2010 with this special limited edition instrument, special online features on Fender.com and other promotional efforts.

“Well beyond commemorative and beautiful, this unique recipe sounds and feels incredible,” said Jay Piccirillo, senior marketing manager, Fender Bass Products. “You owe it to yourself to go experience one of these before they are gone."

For more information, go to www.fender.com.

About Fender Musical Instruments Corporation

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) is the world’s leading guitar manufacturer, and its name has become synonymous with all things rock ‘n’ roll. Iconic Fender® instruments such as the Telecaster®, Stratocaster®, Precision Bass® and Jazz Bass® guitars are known worldwide as the instruments that started the rock revolution, and they continue to be highly prized by today’s musicians and collectors. FMIC brands include Fender®, ®, Guild®, Tacoma®, ®, Jackson®, ®, EVH®, SWR® and Groove Tubes®, among others. For more information, visit www.fender.com.

# # # The Jazz Bass®: A History and Appreciation

As the end of the 1950s neared, Fender® had a quartet of innovative electric instruments with designs that would in time prove massively popular and influential. The Telecaster® (1951) and the by-then perfected Stratocaster® (1954) were well on their way to indispensability as 1960 loomed; the Jazzmaster® (1958) took a longer but equally enduring route to cult stardom.

The other instrument was the Precision Bass® (1951). The world’s first commercially successful solid-body electric bass guitar, it too was destined for greatness. The Precision Bass was designed with ingeniously efficient simplicity and utility to deliver three things—ease of use, precise intonation (hence the name) and a loud, booming sound that unwieldy acoustic basses simply weren’t capable of matching.

Throughout most of the 1950s and in contrast to the development of multiple guitar models, Fender stuck with one bass—it opted to redesign the groundbreaking Precision Bass rather than introduce a new bass guitar model. That thinking changed as the decade waned, however, and and his staff turned their attention to a new “deluxe” bass guitar design in 1959.

The reasoning was clear enough—it was simply time for a new Fender bass. And just as the Stratocaster expanded on the Telecaster rather than supplanting it, this new bass would complement the Precision Bass by offering great tonal versatility and a design that went beyond the utilitarian to the realm of the sleekly stylish. If the Precision was a Chevy, the new deluxe model would be a Ferrari.

Leo Fender himself said so. In a Guitar Player magazine interview years later, he said, “Well, it’s like a car, you know—you come out with a standard model, then you have a deluxe model—a Cadillac version.”

That model, the guitar, was introduced in 1960.

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An interesting name choice, given that 1958’s Jazzmaster guitar, with which the Jazz Bass shared part of its name, had failed to win over the “serious” jazz musicians it was intended for. As with the Jazzmaster, the Jazz Bass was released and promptly ignored by jazz musicians. It would find favor with those players—spectacularly so in some cases—but not for years to come.

Next to its big brother, though, there was no doubt that the 1960 Jazz Bass really was a deluxe instrument. The most visible and audible evidence of this was that it had two pickups instead of one, giving it a tonal versatility not found in the Precision Bass. The Precision Bass made a great sound, but it made one great sound.

A 1959 Jazz Bass prototype boasted large single-coil soapbar pickups similar to those on the Jazzmaster; a five-polepiece neck pickup and a four-polepiece bridge pickup. These became narrower eight-polepiece (two per string) pickups by the time production started.

The Jazz Bass’s neck pickup contributed the sort of warmth and fullness typical of a Precision Bass. Its secret weapon, however, was its bridge pickup, which produced a guttural midrange growl and a clear, trebly high-end new at the time to the Fender bass sound.

Since the original Jazz Bass guitars had volume and tone controls for both pickups (in a short-lived dual stacked-knob configuration), the tonal personalities of both pickups could be blended many different ways. You didn’t just get one sound with a Jazz Bass—you got an entire palette of pleasing bass sounds, something new in the still-young electric bass experience.

Certainly a different sound, but also a quite different look. Although it clearly resembled the Precision Bass in basic form, the Jazz Bass looked substantially different in several important ways.

Most apparent was a feature borrowed from the Jazzmaster—an offset waist— that conveyed a sleeker and more curvaceous look to the Jazz Bass. In true Fender fashion, however, this was an innovation rooted not in form but in function—the sexier look was a by-product of the more practical consideration that the offset waist made the instrument more comfortable to play when seated, as most “serious” players of the time often were.

Less obvious was the fact that the offset waist also made the Jazz Bass slightly larger (46 ¼” long, 14” wide) and hence slightly heavier then the Precision Bass (45 ¾” long, 13” wide), so there was more body mass to contribute to the tone.

The other major design departure of the Jazz Bass, and the biggest in terms of its feel, was its neck, which was noticeably more narrow at the nut—a slim 1 7/16” compared to the Precision’s hefty 1 ¾”—and thinner front-to-back. This felt substantially different from the Precision’s great tree trunk of a neck, and guitarists who were converting to bass in increasing numbers during that era found the Jazz Bass’s slender neck especially user-friendly, especially when it came to playing faster, more intricate passages.

The 1960 Jazz Bass came in a standard sunburst finish with a tortoiseshell pickguard. It had a rosewood fingerboard with clay dot inlays, a finger rest mounted below the G string, adjustable mutes below each string, a strap button on the back of the headstock, and big chrome covers over the neck pickup and bridge/bridge pickup, the latter stamped with a large Fender “F”.

Fender started revising and improving the Jazz Bass almost immediately. As noted, the Jazz Bass was originally available only in the sunburst finish with a tortoise shell pickguard, but within a year it was offered in 14 custom colors, several with matching painted and most with three-ply white nitrocellulose pickguards.

The biggest early design change came in December 1961, when Fender dispensed with the two stacked control knobs and reverted to the three-control layout of the 1959 prototype (volume-volume-master tone). Interestingly, however, stack-knob Jazz Bass guitars continued to be produced well into 1962 as parts were used up. Other early design revisions included:

• 1961: Addition of two more patent numbers to the two originally found below the headstock logo. • 1963: Individual below-string mutes replaced by simpler all-string mute glued to the inside of the bridge cover; slab replaced by round-laminated fingerboards. • 1964: Three-ply white nitrocellulose pickguards replaced by three-ply white vinyl pickguards; clay fingerboard inlays replaced by faux pearl inlays.

Other design changes and options were implemented throughout the remainder of the 1960s and 1970s, although their infrequency might only underline how little the Jazz Bass has changed in 50 years. These other changes included:

• 1966: White binding added to the neck; pearl block inlays replace dot fingerboard inlays; medium jumbo frets replace previous smaller frets; Fender-produced paddle-shaped keys replace clover-shaped tuning keys; tuning machine gears no long turn backward. • 1969: Larger and bolder logo decal replaces traditional headstock logo; headstock strap button removed; paddle tuning keys discontinued; fingerboard option with black binding and black block inlays introduced. • 1972: Bridge pickup moved about half an inch closer to the bridge, introducing a noticeable tonal change. • 1974: Three-bolt neck plate introduced; white binding and block inlay option for maple fingerboards introduced. • 1976: Headstock logo again redesigned; serial number moved from neck plate to headstock logo. • 1977: Control knobs changed to black plastic with numbers.

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It’s one thing to describe the history of the Jazz Bass in terms of its origin, design features and subsequent design modifications.

But the Jazz Bass is much more than the sum of its parts, and it’s something else entirely to survey its 50-year history in terms of its effect on popular music; to look at what players have done with the instrument. Because in those respects, the Jazz Bass was—and remains—a phenomenal instrument.

The Jazz Bass has been an instrument of choice for some of the most creative minds and talented hands in music, making its sound a ubiquitous presence in popular music for five decades now. Even a short list of players known for using the instrument is most impressive—Joe Osborn, Jack Casady, , Larry Graham, Herbie Flowers, Greg Lake, Jaco Pastorius, John Paul Jones, Sting, Geddy Lee, Marcus Miller, , Ron Blair, Adam Clayton and Verdine White.

When you’re listening to the Experience, Sly & the Family Stone, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Led Zeppelin, the Police, Rush, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and U2, you are likely listening to a Jazz Bass.

When you hear the breathtaking bass breaks by John Entwistle on the Who’s immortal “My Generation,” by John Paul Jones in Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” and by Geddy Lee in Rush’s “YYZ,” you’re hearing a Jazz Bass.

Jack Casady’s spooky line in Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and his sinuous line winding throughout “Somebody to Love”? A Jazz Bass. The even spookier psychedelic blues parts woven by Jones into Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” and by U.K. session great Herbie Flowers into David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”? A Jazz Bass. Even great bassists who aren’t widely known as Fender players have used the Jazz Bass at one time or another—Paul McCartney is known to have played a left-handed model on The Beatles (the “White Album”), and Yes-man Chris Squire includes one in his arsenal.

And then there’s funk, soul and disco. An entirely new way of playing a bass guitar—the irresistibly funky and technically sophisticated slap-and-pop bass odyssey pioneered by Larry Graham in the 1960s with Sly & the Family Stone— was launched with a Jazz Bass. Among the great many notable exponents to play the Jazz this way, standouts include William “Bootsy” Collins, who played his with James Brown in the 1960s before making bass history with Parliament- Funkadelic in the 1970s; Verdine White with hit factory Earth, Wind & Fire; and Michael “Flea” Balzary, who often used his 1961 Jazz Bass to bring the style to prominence in modern rock music with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

And as noted, the Jazz did eventually find favor in the jazz/contemporary R&B world so avidly sought be Fender in the late 1950s and ’60s. As jazz continued to expand and break exciting new ground throughout the 1960s and 1970s, these players grew to prize the Jazz Bass for its smooth feel and tonal versatility.

This is readily apparent when considering that today the Jazz Bass easily has the greatest number of signature jazz/R&B artists; more so than any other instrument model in the Fender family—a list that now includes greats such as Marcus Miller, Reggie Hamilton, Victor Bailey, Steve Bailey and Jaco Pastorius.

Pastorius. The very mention of the name seems almost synonymous with the Jazz Bass, with which he will be forever identified, and no discussion of the instrument is complete without him. Widely regarded as one of the greatest electric bassists who ever lived and a musician of incalculable influence, Jaco Pastorius made his mark and redefined the possibilities of the instrument with a battered pair of early-’60s Jazz basses. For many players, including a whole new generation born after his tragic untimely passing in 1987, electric bass starts with him, and hence starts with a Jazz Bass.

In the wake of the development of Fender’s two titans of bass, the Precision Bass and the Jazz Bass, an entire bass industry arose and flourished. Countless builders produced their own bass guitars in models ranging from bare-bones simplicity to elaborate (and expensive) complexity. Whatever the case, it always seems that a disproportionately high number of copycat and near-copycat instruments take their inspiration from the Jazz Bass. Often imitated but never equaled, you might say.

And in a related thought, sometimes you have to leave home to truly appreciate home. It’s not at all uncommon for highly esteemed players to forego the instrument at some point in their careers in favor of forays with other newer or more technically sophisticated instruments—all well and good, of course—only to later rediscover the elegantly simple magic of the Jazz Bass and perhaps wonder why they’d ever strayed in the first place. Geddy Lee and Greg Lake are both fond of recalling how they “came home” to their respective black Jazz Bass guitars after years of experimentation with other instruments; delighted to realize that the sound and feel they so prize was there all along.

* * * * *

As it now begins the second half of its journey to the century mark, the Fender Jazz Bass currently exists in more than 40 incarnations, from a lean-and-mean Standard series model to the rough-and-ready Road Worn model to the enormous Steve Bailey Jazz Bass VI.

Can it really be 50? It wears it well. It still looks so modern. It’s still much more than the sum of its parts, even though they’re really cool parts. It still looks and feels so sleek, curvaceous and sexy that it almost doesn’t really compute that the Jazz has reached a full half-century. It seems to lack its revered older brother’s air of rough austerity, but that’s probably a good thing, because it makes the Jazz Bass forever adventurous and forever cool. It means that no matter how long the Jazz continues to rule the realm of bass, it’s forever young.