Fender American Performer Jazzmaster Penny RW (Ex-Demo) #US18067231

What we say:

Fender’s American Performer range brings an excellent selection of the most famous Fender designs, made in the USA, to players at great prices. Each Fender American Performer guitar has been specially designed to give gigging guitarists the tones and tools they need for excellent, high quality performances.

Special design features, custom wound pickups and fresh new finishes make this range stand out as one for players of all stripes to get behind. Fender USA quality at a budget friendly price: sounds perfect to us!

Fender’s most popular Offset enjoys a contemporary re-draft here in the American Performer Series. The Jazzmaster, originally thought of as something of an idiosyncratic instrument, has proven itself to be a versatile and rewarding design. It is now one of Fender’s most popular guitars. So, what does this particular model bring to the table?

A few things, as it happens. First off, the pickups are new Yosemite models, hand wound and voiced especially for this guitar. They are still true single coils and are housed in the larger surrounds to bring out those slightly warmer Jazzmaster tones. There is enough jangle for the Indie guys and enough raunch for Blues and Grunge players.

Working alongside these is Fender’s Greasebucket tone system. The Greasebucket is basically a tone control that does its job properly: turning back the knob removes treble frequencies without ruining every other part of your sound like some standard tone circuits do! You’ll find yourself using the Tone knob a lot more than before when you have the Greasebucket in there!

The other major design change is the tremolo. Regular Jazzmasters have a uniquely designed tremolo system with a long arm and large metal body plate. Yes, they definitely look cool but in practical terms they can prove to be difficult.

This American Performer Jazzmaster has a Strat-style vintage tremolo. In terms of design, application and practicality, this type of bridge is miles ahead: you can get loads of expression from this! The bridge is easier to intonate, too, so tuning and other factors are improved immediately. This was a bold move by Fender and we wholeheartedly applaud it.

Aside from these major changes, the American Performer Jazzmaster brings a comfortable Modern C-shape neck (not skinny at all, just right in fact) with a satin finish, a 9.5” radius fingerboard with Jumbo frets and tuners that have an efficient 18:1 ratio. All of that means we have here a cool Jazzmaster that looks and sounds classic but behaves in a contemporary fashion. This is absolutely brilliant news for most guitarists.

As we mentioned, the Fender American Performer range has some excellent new colours, too: this Jazzmaster is finished in Penny and looks simply beautiful.