[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] pal Mike I hope you're happy, healthy, and safe and welcome back to the channel for

another Jazz Master review. This time featuring the newly released Fender American Vintage II 1966 Jazzmaster. I have to be honest, I was initially really excited for this guitar despite its very high price, and I'm sorry to say that my excitement for

this guitar dwindled the moment I opened the case, and I've, it's been just steadily going downhill like Tesla stock. My experience with it has not been entirely positive at all. I, I really expected to sit down with it and have basically the same thoughts with it as I

had with the American Original that I reviewed back in September. That was a guitar that I called 'fine', the basic level of quality that you should expect from Fender USA. It's a good guitar, it's one I had fun playing, and while I had

minor critiques, those were based on preference and generally not a mark against the guitar or how it was put together. And the American Vintage II '66 Jazzmaster so far does not rise to that level of quality at all. The stuff that I'm seeing

on this guitar, and many others like it, is unacceptable for a $2,400 instrument, and I will tell you all about it. But before we get into all of that, I need to say thank you so much to my friends at Working Class Music who stepped in to

make sure that I had one to review the very same one from their own video. I tried desperately for like a month and a half before release to try and get one. I just couldn't, but Jason, Tia, Nelson, Xander, they stepped in to make sure that

I had this thing to look over. I also have to say that I'm gonna be breaking ranks with Working Class who were very effusive in praise in their own review and that's okay. Two people can view the same guitar and walk away with wildly

divergent views on said instrument. That's natural, that's human, that's how we all function. So when you watch my review where I point out a lot of negatives and then you go back and re-watch Working Class's review and you see that they're overly positive about

this model, that doesn't mean that one of us is more or less trustworthy than the other. That just means that we're different people and we cue in to different things. And so when you see a range of opinion from a bunch of different channels, everyone is

coming at the guitar with a different perspective and that's great. Take every review that you see with a grain of salt. Factor them together and compare them to your own needs as a musician, as a player, as a tech, whatever you may be. Let's talk

specs. [Music] The American Vintage II 1966 Fender Jazzmaster features a gloss Nitro finished Maple neck with a 25 and a half inch scale length and 21 vintage tall frets on a bound and blocked round laminated

Rosewood fingerboard with a seven and a quarter radius, six thousand style tuners on a curiously small Jazzmaster headstock with a bone nut. The Alder body is finished in a Sunburst Nitro over a poly sealer and wears a tortoiseshell

guard with a wide vintage bevel. The body also features an angled neck pocket to eliminate the use of shims, measuring to about a full degree. Bridge and vibrato hardware is the usual AVRI, and the pickups are Pure Vintage '66 pickups measuring at 6.5 in the bridge and 6.4

in the neck. It has a three-way toggle switch for pickup selection as well as one meg volume and tone controls in the lead circuit. On the upper horn lies the rhythm circuit controls and on/off switch, one meg volume and a 50k tone. The

guitar is strung with 10 to 46 strings and is tuned to E standard. Also, it's 2400 okay. Let's let's start with a few things that I actually like about this guitar. The first thing I'm going to call out is the weight. This guitar is actually

fairly light for what it is and I would say just a little bit lighter than that American Original I reviewed back in September. I don't own a scale, I can't tell you exactly what the number is, but it doesn't impress me as overly heavy or

overly light, so no gripes there. The neck on the American Vintage II is also just a little bit slimmer than the American Original, especially as you get up the neck toward the 12th fret. I'll put measurements on screen so you can see

for yourself the nut width is just a little bit slimmer than 1 and 11/16 but not so much that it enters skinny nut territory. I wish we could get one in 5/8 from the factory, but uh this will do. But

again, just like the American Original, I do want to point out that this does have sort of a 'you' presence to the feel of the back of the neck just because of the binding. The neck gets a little bit of a shoulder up here and then kind of

flattens out as it meets the binding. So that's just a quirk of bound Fender necks. You can expand back that on these, the American Originals, the 65s, even on some original 66 guitars you can feel sort of a shoulder, so that's not that's

not too far out of the ordinary. Now, all of this is a good thing for folks like me who prefer a smaller neck, but if you're the kind who likes your necks thick with two C's, you might want to look at last year's model, the American

Original, that's a much thicker neck. Oh, and speaking of the neck, I do need to praise Fender for getting the block inlay size correct. This was an issue on so many of the reissues of years gone by, like the Squier Vintage Modified Bass

Six that I own has these tiny, tiny blocks that are kind of an eyesore for me, knowing so well how big these are supposed to be. Sadly, that's in my brain for life. I can't unsee the undersized inlays on reissue guitars, but these are

the right size and that makes me happy to see [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] but if you liked the sound of the pure

vintage '65 pickups found in the American Vintage '65 guitars as well as the recent American Originals, well you're in luck because I think these Pure Vintage '66 pickups are just rebranded '65s. They have the same gray bobbins, the same blue and

red dots on the bottom to indicate position. The DC resistance measures the same, the color of the wire is identical, and if you think about it, I guess it kind of makes sense because original 1965 and 1966 pickups aren't all that different from each other either. In fact,

there's no real difference that I can think of between those two model years that would justify a ground up respect. So yeah, if you like the '65 pickups you're in luck, they seem the same to me. I don't know, you listen and tell me.

[Music] Thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] And starting off the complaint portion of this review, the knobs are still oriented with five, six, and seven staring up at the player instead of 10 when you roll down. Seven and eight are

facing you. I don't know why Fender keeps doing this. 10 should be facing me as a player. I hope that you agree because they've been doing this since the American Vintage '65s and I just don't understand. Fender, please put 10 facing

the player I mean it's easy enough to reorient yourself that's what I will do before I send it back to Jason but oh it's so frustrating to see this on every single new guitar same with the Pros the Pro Twos the 65s such a curious move and

now for all of the bad stuff at this point most of you who are familiar with my work and this channel will know that I try to approach a guitar hoping to like it that when I have a complaint about the guitar if it's preference based I let you know that

things like the neck size that's stuff that I complain about all the time just because I have a vast preference for the smaller necks found on 60s guitars that's me that's not everybody I can I can live with that the stuff that I'm

seeing on this guitar has nothing to do with preference and in fact I I don't have a lot to say about playability because everything is so bad for a factory made guitar that costs twenty-four hundred dollars as I said before I was expecting to pick up this guitar and

have relatively the same experience with it that I had with that great American original Jazz Master back in September uh and I'm shocked at how different these two guitars are for having been made in the exact same year genuinely I expected my major complaint to be that

they use the wrong headstock for a bound-in block 66 neck if you don't know when CBS took over Fender in 1965 a bunch of things changed not overnight but they did change and when they rolled out the bound block inlay neck they used the

large CBS headstock, the same one that you find on Stratocasters. It's it's a great looking headstock. It looks a little faster than this one, makes the guitar look like it's in motion even when it's standing still. Well, guitars don't really move on their own so that

makes sense. Now, that's not to say that every '66 Jazzmaster has that headstock. We see the small headstock continue well into '66. Generally, you only see that small headstock on the necks that look like they're from '65, that's with binding

and dot inlays. In fact, in research for this review and over the years that I've been working on Jazz Masters, I have not seen a single '66 bound block inlay neck with the small headstock. That's not to say that there aren't any out there.

It's just to say that they're that rare that I've never seen one and I would love to see one. So if you know of a real 1966 Jazzmaster with binding with blocks and the small headstock, please let me know. Uh, that

would blow my mind. I love finding out about another rare variant of my favorite guitar. Um, but yeah, I've just never seen one and I could not find one on the internet to show you. But even if there are extraordinarily rare examples of 1966

Jazzmasters with binding and blocks in the small headstock, there's nothing in the literature from Fender to indicate that they were attempting to recreate this very rare beast among the Fender lineup of the era. So again, that doesn't really hold up. That dog don't hunt, and

like I said before I'm gonna have to break rank with my friends at working class because this does matter to me if you're going to call something a 1966 model year I think it should look just like the '66 Model year as I'm thinking about it what

strikes me is that it almost feels like they just reused the CAD file from the made in Mexico 60th anniversary Classic Jazzmaster which had binding and blocks and a small headstock. Squire has models with binding, blocks and a small headstock, even the Fender Japan models

with binding blocks and a small headstock. Maybe it wasn't cost effective to do a huge run of Jazzmaster necks with the big headstock, but other models in the American Vintage II lineup did get the big headstock. Why are reissues so often not actually reissues? Where's the

big headstock? Bring that boy back! I'm off my soapbox, let's move on to actual concerns. [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

[Music] It seems to me that these guitars were rushed out of the factory, and of course I don't have any special knowledge of the inner workings of Fender. I don't know if these just weren't produced quickly enough or if what I'm seeing is

related to the recent mass layoffs or morale or something from top down I have no way of knowing all I can tell you is that the stuff that I've seen on this guitar and many others like it is brand new to me I've never seen

quality control like this from Fender before and it's it's really disappointing the body's and necks are riddled with dings from the factory both in the finish and underneath it here are close-ups of the body the neck the fretboard is super dry and has glue

all over it there's glue squeeze out from under the frets glue left over from the inlays there are chips out of the binding there's chipped finish around the nut there are stains and discolorations on the binding too I can't believe it left the factory like

this the inlays themselves are rough with sanding marks and you can feel it as you bend can you hear that let me bend on another fret I'm not getting stuck on this fretboard but when I'm over the inlay that's unpleasant in addition to rough

inlays there are also tool marks all over this fretboard all over the binding and the frets themselves aren't even what I'd call crowned when I talk about crowning what I mean is the rounded top of the fret when you level the frets on a

fretboard that flattens out the top of the fret so you need to go back in with a tri-corner file or a crowning file and re-establish the curved domed top of the frets both for comfort and playability for fretting precision and also precise

intonation when you leave a fret completely flat that can cause issues for playability. The string might vibrate against the fret causing sort of a choked off note and because you're not fretting dead center on the fret, you're actually fretting a

little bit behind center that can also cause issues for intonation. Now this is kind of hard to see on camera, so I use the blue Sharpie, the same one that I use for checking out my crowns as I'm doing fret work, just to make my point a little

clearer. Look how flat these are. I don't remember ever seeing fretwork this poor on a factory Fender instrument, and in fact because the fretwork is so bad on this guitar, I decided to look back at the American Original from 2022 that I

reviewed on this channel in September, and those frets were great. And then that got me wondering, well what about my American Pro also from 2022, and those crowns are nice and thin, and so then I decided to look at the frets on a 40th

anniversary Squire neck that I was working on, and those frets are crowned much better than what you're seeing on the twenty-four hundred dollar American Fender guitar. What is going on, friends? On a 24 hundred dollar guitar, I expect to see at least competent fret work. I'm

not expecting the finely honed, perfectly thin crowns of say Danny West or Nate Wood or Robin Hiltz or Kate Katz. These are people who I look up to as a guitar tech, people who are performing miraculous fret work. What I'm seeing on

This, for twenty-four hundred dollars, I I can't support this, but friends, the crowns of these frets aren't just flat, they're also wildly inconsistent. You can see on the bass side of this neck the crowns are thinner than they are on the

treble side, and if I haven't made my point well enough already, here's a Lake Placid blue one that was sent to me in my Instagram DMs and some frets are crowned and others are completely flat. I don't understand how this left the

factory with half-crowned frets or some frets crowned and others not. This is madness. So, if you thought it was bad already, buckle up. One of my favorite things about Fender Jazz Masters, you know it, I know it, we all love it, is the vibrato.

It's basically, in my book, worth the price of admission. Would you believe that many, many of these Jazz Masters shipped from the factory with the wrong arm? The arm that shipped with these guitars was of a slightly larger diameter than the interior diameter of

the collet into which it's inserted, and as a result, I've heard so many complaints of people who either couldn't install their arm in the first place, or if they could, just the tiniest sliver of the arm would go in and then it was

impossible to move. Ryan from 60 Cycle Hum's guitar is like that, Emily from Get Offsets guitar is like that, this one was like that. I don't know RJ personally, but I watched his video right when these guitars came out and the arm is only

partially inserted Fender, what is going on? A lot of these have the wrong trim arms, so if you get one and you can't put your arm in all the way or it's extraordinarily tight, you can't move it like this, reach out to Fender.

or I don't know, buy an aftermarket by products. As if that weren't enough, it still bottoms out, the arm is still just a little bit too long, just like the American Originals and the 65s before them. Uh, let's see what else haven't we

mentioned yet? Oh, some of the routing of these neck pockets is wildly inconsistent. Here's a picture of a Fiesta red 61 Stratocaster where you can see that the neck pocket is not routed straight. This happens to be the same owner as the Lake Placid blue Jazz

master that I showed you earlier, and that person has returned them both. I mean, what else to talk about? Oh, Troggly did a video on the Telecaster Deluxe, and the dots on the neck are off center the whole way up the neck, which is hilarious. Uh, I've just seen a video of someone's

case latches not working. Friends, I'm not usually that guy railing on about quality control, probably because I'm jaded as a guitar tech. I've seen just about everything that can go wrong, and I just fix it. I don't often complain about these things, but

it's it's a mad house out there. I don't know how things are this bad. It beggars belief. Oh, and we're not even done yet with this guitar. Do you remember the American Original that I reviewed that had the busted tone cap because it was

sandwiched between the guard and the body, well, look what I discovered when I took the guard off of this one. What I just took the pickguard off of the American Vintage 2 for the first time and look at this absurd ground wire situation from the neck pickup. I've

never seen this before. My guy, you don't have to do it like this, okay? A much better way to do this would be to run the neck pickup ground this way and this way and attach it to the back of one of the rhythm circuit pots, or I mean

you could even, you know, snip right here, leave a little extra and uh tag along onto the ground of the toggle switch, but running it the whole way to this end of the control cavity is just, well, it gave me a good laugh and so I can appreciate it for that. Oh my God, I

just noticed that the bridge pickup, it's going there. This doesn't make any sense at all, friends. Just run your pickup grounds to the back of a pot. You'll thank me later. You'll be much happier. Just in case the ground connection from the switch to the shielding plate

doesn't work or goes bad. Also note that uh, just like the American Original, there are no tubs anymore. This is just a plate on the bottom of the cavity, which is really not doing a whole lot as far as shielding is concerned. [Music]

Thank you, thank you. [Music] Foreign. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hmm. [Music] What else to say? Uh, the factory setup was abysmal. Really disappointing. Uh, the strings were neither flat nor were they

following the curvature of the fretboard uh the high E was .09 inches above the 12th fret the B was .08 the G was 0.07 the D was 0.08 the A was .09 and the low E was 0.06

like somebody just didn't finish on here oh and the strings have almost a single wrap around the tuners so if I pull the string doesn't stay in tune at all these strings are not properly secured and that's also disappointing to see because it doesn't

stay in tune and if someone were to pick this up off the wall and go hey a jazz master and play it it's gonna fall out right away that's disappointing okay so this video has gone on long enough at this point I hope that I've made my case

that quality control is of a level that is disconcerting to me the things I'm seeing here are absolute deal breakers for me and I I hope they are for you too because for 24 hundred dollars you would expect a much higher level of

quality and you know I haven't even said anything about playability like does it play yeah is it a guitar yeah does it make a sound yeah I I just think it's so similar in sound and overall feel that I would point you to the American

original and say Ah that's what this is supposed to be that's the better version of this uh this neck even has some like choice flame on it which is nice but I don't know the the things that are negative about this far outweigh any of

the good and as a result I cannot recommend this in good conscience. I'm sure that not every guitar exhibits these same issues. I'm sure there are some perfect ones out there, but if it were me and I were spending 2400 of my hard-earned dollars, I would not feel

comfortable rolling the dice on this model, at least not right now, not until Fender gets their quality control under control. Look, if you've already bought one and your guitar doesn't look like this and you like your guitar, I am so genuinely happy for you. That's my ideal

experience for you. I want you to love your guitar. I'm not here to tell you to not like your guitar, to not love your guitar. If you're enjoying it, you're making music, you're being creative, that's all that matters. Guitars are objects of pure joy. They are conduits of

self-expression. They should be sources of enjoyment and creativity. And here's the thing, a lot of the issues that I talked about on this guitar can be fixed by a tech. I'm going to be recrowning these frets, also doing some spot leveling because there is one fret that is a little bit

too high. I'm going to be giving it a full setup. I'm going to be taking those tool marks out of the fretboard. I'm going to smooth out those inlays. I'm going to install a string trim because I can't send this back to Jason in good

conscience in the condition that it currently exists in. Jason, I got you buddy, but here's the thing. I'm a tech and I'm rather expensive and you shouldn't have to expect to pay more money on top of the twenty-four hundred dollar price

for a guitar that should be great from the factory, I think that's a reasonable position to take. Okay, I'm gonna go lay down and I'm going to gorge myself on the spiciest Indian food that I can possibly find in this city and

um yeah, I'm sorry. Thanks for bearing with me on this video. I I genuinely, again, I don't want to make negative content, but I don't have a lot of good things to say about this guitar. But I genuinely hope that Fender pulls through and the Fender

fixes their QC issues and that they come back with a refresh of this run that is much better than what I'm seeing here now. And if that's the case, if Fender does another run and all of a sudden QC is vastly improved, I am happy to

re-review this. I would be thrilled to make a video where I could recommend an American-made guitar like this that is genuinely a good buy and has the bound blocked neck. I do appreciate you coming back to the channel again and again. Thank you so much for spending

your time with my work. It means the world to me, and a shout out to my supporters on Patreon who were there for me in my time of need trying to write this script, trying to make this video. Uh, it has been such a daunting effort, uh

and I really can't overstate how how much I dragged my feet on making this thing. Uh, but they were there for me, and if you two are interested in supporting the channel, there are links in the description down below. I hope that you're taking care of yourselves and

each other and I hope that you're having fun with guitars because I sure didn't and I'll see you in the next video but if there's never another video you know what happened

JAZZMASTER REVIEW #8: The Fender American Vintage II 1966

JAZZMASTER REVIEW #8: The Fender American Vintage II 1966