The Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster 3-Colour Sunburst combines authentic vintage styling with modern appointments including clean sounding Duncan Designed pickups and a modern fingerboard radius. The model retains the dual-circuit switching and controls and floating-vibrato bridge from the legendary Fender models. Featuring a maple neck with a vintage-tint gloss finish, this guitar is equipped with a 9.5” radius rosewood fingerboard adorned with 21 medium jumbo frets and parchment dot inlays.
The basswood body of this guitar contains a tortoise shell pickguard and is powered by Jazzmaster single-coil pickups with a circuit selector switch and pickup selector toggle switch. White Stratocaster-style control knobs (lead circuit) and black disc knobs (rhythm circuit) allow you to personalise your sound to your liking. A vintage-style bridge and non-locking floating vibrato with vintage-style tremolo arm ensure a clean intonation with the ability to add shimmering modulations without affecting your tuning adversely. Your tuning can be adjusted via stable vintage-style chrome tuners.
The main features of the Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster 3-Colour Sunburst include:
I purchased this to play surf guitar. I expected it to be very bright and it certainly is. The two single coils deliver a very brilliant sound that cuts through like a razor. No complaints there.
The vibrato seems to work well and I have not noticed it pulling the guitar very much out of tune. I believe there was an issue with this on vintage models but they seem to have something better in there now.
The tuners are pretty much the standard far eastern stuff but again they do the job. There is a rather cheap and nasty string tree for the B and E strings.
The bridge is something else though. There is not much angle for the strings over the bridge and you can, without much effort, dislodge any string from its seating. Not a guitar for heavy thrash music.
Lacquer finish is OK and the head/neck are in a pleasing butterscotch clear lacquer. No complaints with this area.
Controls are standard Jagmaster nonsense with 2 circuits. I suppose there is some value in this but I cannot see me using it. The inset rotary controls on the upper bout are a bit naff really, just a little too cheap. But I wont use them so who cares.
Two main complaints.
The set up was pretty bad. The action was way too high. The E string was riding on the intonation adjuster screw and in consequence buzzed like crazy. String spacing was not even vaguely even. OK, I expect to do some work, but this was just a bit too bad, not a great advert Fender!
Second complaint (and this is for most manufacturers) is the plastic coating on the scratchplate. There were 2 layers on this guitar. I really do not want to take the guitar to bits to remove this before I can play it, I really dont! Take it of before you assemble please!
Overall it is an OK guitar, will do the job and will sound fine.