❌SOLD❌ Fender Jazz Bass Refinished Sunburst, 1966

The Fender Jazz Bass appeared in 1960, at a time when Fender dominated the electric guitar and bass market, but needed to introduce new models. The Jazz Bass Intended as a Deluxe instrument with a very different sound, look and feel from the Precision Bass, which had in a few years become a standard. However, the P-Bass was not fully accepted by Jazz players, and Fender wanted to expand their market to include them. The Jazz Bass featured a new offset-waist body design, dual single coil pickups with two poles for each string, and a narrow neck with a Rosewood fingerboard. Initial models also sported concentric volume and tone pots, though this arrangement went out of production by 1962, and a control setup of individual volumes and a single master tone control was used. 

With the new 1960 models, and some 1959 models, Fender added a new Rosewood fingerboard; all previous models had had one-piece Maple necks. The earliest Rosewood boards were a ‘slab’ design, meaning that the Rosewood board had a flat bottom and a crowned top. By 1962, Fender had learned to apply a veneer to a curved Maple neck, and by 1963, the slab board was gone.

Here we have a Fender Jazz Bass built likely in 1966, after Fender was purchased by CBS, and still in Fullerton, California. The neck plate carries the serial number and the characteristic CBS-period stylized F stamp.

This example has most original parts, including electronics, and the faux-tortoise pickguard is a newer replacement. It was refinished in a light-relic style Sunburst for the body and natural for the neck, by Douglas Harrison. The original decal has also been replaced; many of the original decals from this period did not fare well as they were installed over the finish, and tended to dry out and chip off.

This bass has been expertly refretted and set up, and plays extremely well.

A rectangular hard shell case from the 1970’s is included.