FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Henric Carlsson +46 (0)31 352 28 00 [email protected] FENDER® INTRODUCES 50th ANNIVERSARY JAZZ BASS® GUITAR SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Jan. 14, 2010) – To celebrate 50 years of its groundbreaking and ubiquitous Jazz Bass guitar, 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 guitars—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, headstock logo, chrome pickup/bridge covers, “C” neck shape and white Pearloid block fingerboard 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®, Squier®, Guild®, Tacoma®, Gretsch®, Jackson®, Charvel®, 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 Leo Fender 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 Fender Jazz Bass guitar, was introduced in 1960. * * * * * 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 headstocks 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 fingerboards 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.