1960 Fender Jazzmaster Deep Dive, Part 2!
Top, strings off 
Bridge pickup cutout 
The jack 
The lead controls 
Tone capacitor 
Lead control details 
Warped pickguard! 
Rhythm controls 
Rhythm controls 2 
Tan lines 
More tan lines
Under the hood now! The aluminum shielding plate under the pickguard is stamped “Kaiser” in red letters. No ground wire was needed for the jack, since the shield is electrically a ground. There’s a waxy old original tone cap, and the typical cloth-covered Fender wire hooking everything up.
You can see how much these old pickguards can shrink and warp, when not held in place by the many screws visible in the first photo. This makes them no fun to remove, as they can be very tight around the pickups. You don’t want to crack a 1960 pickguard!
These guitars were designed with a separate set of volume and tone controls for the neck/rhythm pickup. These are the pots with the wheel-shaped knobs that protrude through the pickguard. After the Stratocaster, it has been reported that Leo and the Fender design team wanted to push the capabilities of the electric guitar even further, with a new vibrato (not tremolo!) bar design, and the expanded control set for more tonal possibilities, plus the design of a pickup that resembles the Gibson P-90.
The “tan lines” around the neck heel show how much lighter the original finish was!
Many players prefer the Strat and the Tele, but no doubt the Jazzmaster and the similar Jaguar are great guitars, with their own devoted followings.
WordPress won’t allow me to upload videos (at least not .mov types) and I have several that go even further into detail on this cool guitar. So, those will appear here in a Part 3 if I can figure that out, or I will upload them to my YouTube channel. Watch this space!