American Professional Series II Jazzmaster

Video Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Welcome to get offset. My name is Emily and I’m here to unbox a new guitar. I was contacted by fender. They asked me if I wanted to demo their new special two series. And I said, yes, because you don’t look a gift guitar in the mouth or do you, they want me to actually I’m. That was a silly thing to say.

And I know a lot of people think that. Uh, gear demo Wars tend to just like go wax poetic about all the gear that they get. And I understand that I understand that concern, but I’m going to try and give you my best honest impression of this guitar. I’m told it to Jazzmaster, but I don’t even know what color it is.

I’m hoping for the dark night finish. That’s the one I asked for. And they said they would do their best to accommodate that, but no promises. So let’s look at this, this guitar comes with a heavy duty hard case. No, this is not look like a traditional Tweed guitar case. It’s actually, it’s quite small, which I like, I feel like.

I feel like I have 10 or a guitar cases that are, that are bigger than that. Um, it has a lock it’s plastic. I’m holding it up in a way that I’m sure is making everybody nervous. So I’m just going to turn it around,

says fender on it.

Y’all are gonna see it before I do.

Ooh. Oh, Oh my God. Holy crap. Oh, wow. That is, um, a fresh guitar. I couldn’t smell it. The moment I opened the case. Oh, it’s the dark night. Okay. Let’s talk about this pace. All right. I’m going to get up. I’m probably going to be in and out of frame a little bit in this video, I’m doing my best. Let’s look at this case.

It fits on my love seat. It’s very small

open, open, open. Why aren’t you opening? I’ll do it. Alright, so the guitar, the guitar, it’s the jazz master. It is, uh, the dark night finished, which is what I have requested. I obviously fresh off of the, uh, work bench or whatever it is. It smells like fresh paint. I’m going to put this down for one second.

Let’s talk about the case that comes with it. Alright. Ooh.

That is molded specifically for this Jazzmaster. It’s nice. It feels really secure. Oh, it’s got a really big compartment. This is silica packet. Um, keys, a path certificate, which I don’t know what that means is this 20, 2114. Oh. The case pass is quality control. I got my brief vendor lessons, um, and this little leather bag, I hope I’m in frame.

Um, so it’s fender. It has my warranty information. My certificate of authenticity. Keep this in the case forever. That’s what’s what you do. Yes. Whammy bar and, uh, adjustment tools, Allen, AKA Allen wrenches, and a sticker. And the V the bag even says fender on the inside. Pretty cute. Let’s put that stuff back in there cause I don’t need it quite yet.

I’m going to put the case off to the side. Actually, first, I’m going to grab my other jazz master and see if it sits in this case. I suspect it does because the case was made before this was, um, but this does, I can see, cause I haven’t seen down around it heel, which will make that upper front access a little bit easier.

Um, but let me grab my other Jazzmaster.

And we’ll see if that fits. Yeah, it fits fantastic. Now I can get this case out of the way.

So I’m just going to really quickly set up to play for some first impressions here. Um, but I’ll need to check the levels again. And then anyway, however, I’m going to give some first impressions about this guitar. Let me take this off. There we go. Ooh.

Wow. Pretty smooth fret edges, like really rounded. That’s nice. The Sattin is I love satin finishes. I’m going to scoot over a little bit. I love sat and finishes on a guitar neck, and this has that, that slum really nice. The contouring on the back feels rounder. There’s something, it just looks makes it look more modern.

So we gave them modern, modern style tuners, which isn’t my favorite, but, uh, I know they do tend to stay in tune better. The bridge is like a Mustang bridge. Um, but it’s my understanding. It actually is the nine and a half inch board radius. Like the guitar is itself. We have a push pot here, which can get you more vintage-y tone from the bridge is my understanding.

And the rhythm circuit puts the pickups in series instead of parallel. And they have their own tone controls. It’s very comfortable. It’s it’s about as lightweight as I’ve seen a jazz master. So that’s cool. Uh, the pickups, I mean, I’ve seen videos and they do seem to look more like a Jazzmaster pickups than.

Previous American serious Jazzmaster guitars. Let me at least take the sticker off. I’m just in my hand right now, it feels really good. So this has new pickups, the VMR two pickups, contoured, neck, heel, and Panorama tremolo, which will help you get those deep dive bombs. Allah Eddie van Halen. It’s a push in and the end is kind of shaped to look like an input, Jack, which I think is pretty funny.

Oh, Ooh. It’s hard to describe that action, but that was snug and nice and felt like pneumatic.

So nice. It’s been a while since I’ve had a guitar with a traditional jazz mass with the traditional jazz massive stuff, I brought it.

Wow.

Wow, not in tune. So I’m, let’s plug, let me plug this in and tune it. And then I will, um, Play it. Alright. I am back with my Sunday crush, a pedal board. Uh, I have my Ernie ball volume pedal tuner going into my Traceless automaton, uh, into my Caroline affects Carolyn guitar company, somersault into my merits, Enzo into my chase bliss mood and to my Ernie ball expression heel position.

Um, and into my. Milkman with a touch of a reverb plate, the plate variety.

start with the neck pickup here.

all right, let’s go to the middle position.

now let’s do that special, uh, coil tap. See all that makes it sound different on the only changes the bridge. It makes it more vintage-y. I think

let’s go to the bridge.

so that’s what the knob down

the Nava.

nice. Alright. Let’s look at the rhythm circuit. the circuit is going to be using both pickups. I’m gonna have the both turned on.

No, like a traditional rhythm circuit where it’s just the neck pickup. It is both, but they’re in series, which makes them laugh.

In the middle there. It’s interesting. Let’s uh, add some gain,

huh? Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t have any pedals on before. Did you know? That was just the milk that was too loud.

The series

all right. Serious with the. Bridge the down, this is going to be hard to explain with the, a series and parallel and the, the tone knob going up and down for the bridge. So this is what the bridge pickup tone knob down.

And this isn’t. Parallel

knit.

Then I did the push pull up for the bridge.

Morgan. Let’s do that.

well, that’s retune

does not know where to put me.

I sincerely bet that I am clipping all over the place.

Ooh.

turn up the bass on my aunt’s there.

So there are tall narrow pickups, not quite like jumbo.

I don’t know if it’s a combination of that. They’re being WellMed with nines, but just feels a little, I mean, they definitely feel like they have a lot of slacks or nines.

some diabetes stuff. I don’t even know how to play anything that uses dives like that.

I am having fun with us.

a little out of practice.

Wait, how’s that turned off. Okay.

it’s like the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever played. And I am probably like going to get banned and booed. I like that they replaced the normal them with the, the series, because I would use that a lot more. That extra volume boost I think is really, really cool. I’m really excited about that. And just as a guitar in general, God, it just seems like such a, such a player.

Uh, I think this is a very, very high quality instrument just by looks at. I like the neck contour. Like that’s really comfortable for my little lady hands. Um, I think it’s phenomenal looking like good God. Like this is the most beautiful finish I’ve ever seen on an instrument. No offense to my other instruments.

As I look at them, that’s the dark Knight finish. It’s really attractive. It’s very comfortable. I, um, It’s too early to say, like, what I think about it from like, how is this going to hold up in practice? How am I going to love this in practice? I’m thinking this to band practice. Uh, the next time we have one, I’ll try and get some video.

I’ll try and get some audio is probably going to be really dumb, but I’m going to come back in a bit with probably more playing of this, um, in a more measured, thoughtful kind of way behind my desk. Um, with things in front of me, being able to see myself being able to check my levels. Um, and I’m going to come back with my opinions on this guitar after I take it through my band set list a few times.

So I think that’ll be fun. That’ll be really fun to do. And I’m really excited about it again as the American professional series too, by fenders is right on the back custom custom neck plate. Really cute. I wish there were aftermarket neck plates, but I guess you don’t really change as many things. Uh, and I do really, I wanted put heavier gauge strings on this, but that might wait a few days while that’s the nicest not I’ve seen in a while.

Wow. Ooh, the string tree’s a little different too. Not as like weird old. Hacky looking. Oh, and Oh yeah. People want to know. I think about the, well, want to know, I think about the bridge, no buzzing. It’s like,

which is really cool. Um, so I don’t really feel like I need to make any adjustments there. I mean, swapping out the fender Jazzmaster bridge from Mustang bridge is something guitars have been doing for forever. So, uh, that’s not like, I, I think this is fine, how’s it compared to a mastery is something I wouldn’t be able to tell you.

Anytime soon, I liked my mastery bridge. A lot. It solve the problems I have with the guitar without having to shim the neck. It was more expensive. Um, But it was a drop in replacement, so it was easy to do, but the mastery does have a tendency to sink. So you do have to keep your Allen wrench handy and adjusted every once in a while.

Um, I’ve not heard about that happening with Mustang bridges, but I mean, it could, but, uh, yeah, so that’s a long winded dive into who the unboxing and first impressions of this guitar got that. So Smith, um, Please stay tuned for, uh, the rest of my thoughts, I guess. And I’ll see you in a bit.

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Welcome back. Welcome back. I have had this beautiful American professional two series of fender jazz master in the dark Knight finish for a couple of days now. And I, you know, I ever a lot of people did their first reaction to unboxing videos. Uh, I wanted to take mine for a spin. So I did, I took it to my, uh, my fully massed up, uh, band practice.

Last night, you saw that in the previous five minutes in this video, I was having some trouble with the audio. I hope you can still hear it. Um, but I wanted to like, see how it felt to play. Uh, cause that’s just so important, so important for, for a guitar. Is it too heavy? Uh, are the switches like accidentally engaging with you don’t want them to, um, does it actually have the, the sounds you want it to have in the mix with your normal pedal board?

So at that pedal board, I had, uh, the, the chase bliss Uttama town, the somersault, I, you said you probably heard that Maris, Enzo. Um, you probably didn’t hear the mood or the Ernie ball tremolo. Um, but I just had to pick, I, I was, I can send you the whole rehearsal, so I’m going to go pick up position by pickup position.

Uh, and I’m going to use some overdrive and fuzz from the Velcro blood buzz. Um, that’s an Eastwood product. And, uh, so it’ll be a little bit more of a measured thing. The way I did yesterday, which was just had so much excitement or yesterday where I did the unboxing. I had so much excitement. I was all over the place.

So let’s just say measured. Um, let’s start with the, uh, the neck position. With the strive and Iridium round B drive is just that three. So not really any,

getting a little bit of a yellow halo there. So. Uh, let’s do some overdrive

and let’s do some fuzz shaking my screen a little bit.

I mean, that’s not, that’s awful. It’s for everybody. So maybe, maybe he’s

or maybe the battery’s dying. All right. Let’s go to the middle position with the bridge pickup down. So this bridge here has a push pool. And while I say, push, pull, you push it to get both. But when it’s in the down position, it’s, it’s a more modern sound. And when it’s an up position, it’s a more of a vintage, she sound last night, I felt like I really preferred the vintage.

You sound. Uh, but let’s see how I feel about it now.

Overdriven

and let’s try this. Okay. Did fuzz.

I think I’m just not going to mess with the flaws anymore. Sorry. Uh, so

Oh, I’m sorry. That was in the vintage. It got, I bumped it up. So now we’ll do the model.

a little less noticeable with the middle position. So let’s start with it down in the bridge position.

now we’re doing it in the vintage position, which is up. I misspoke. I’m sorry. That was modern. This is vintage

And now we will do overdrive and the murder.

so plenty of growl in this. Um, I really think that you can get like some really lovely.

Correct.

Yeah. Or

I got to relearn that song.

I have to relearn that song every year, you know,

so you can get like that nice clean sound or you can get that really, uh, really throaty. Kind of growl

but let’s look at the rhythm. What is normally a rhythm circuit on this? It’s actually. A series switch, which I like. Cause I love putting that into my guitars. Uh, I put it in my Squire. Cyclone is like super serious switcher and my star caster has a series switch in it and I love both of those. So let’s check it out.

It turns on both pickups, but you can still do. I’m pretty sure you can still do the vintage II. Um, bridge if you want to, but I don’t hear as big a difference, but let me know what you hear.

turn the volume down though. Cause it’s louder.

With the vintage, that actually is quieter.

Did you hear the difference? The first part of that was with the series on the second was with it off. Let’s do that with the vintage-y

yeah. Very cool. Sounds all around. Um, I am generally very impressed with this instrument. There’s not a lot of negative things I have to say about it after several days. And after kind of putting it through its paces, I found it very comfortable to wear through like an hour and some change of a band practice mostly while standing.

Um, I think the neck is. Extremely comfortable. I, uh, really love the total characteristics of it. Um, I don’t know if that sounds super jazz masters necessarily. I think it sounds Jazzmaster enough to make me happy. Um, but I can get some really smooth kind of sounds. I know we didn’t talk much about the, the whammy bar.

I’m not a big,

I can see myself using it, like IRA, like as a joke almost, but it kind of kind of get like a tape or Billy sound.

Let’s check the pitch on that. There you go.

That’s almost an Octa that goes to from EDD, uh, uh,

And that actually didn’t fall that out of tune.

it’s a really nice, I think it has a very nice touch. The, the vibrato system, uh, It’s cool. I like it a lot again, very, very, just such a comfortable neck. One thing that’s weird is they’re like high narrow frets. And I don’t know if my fret board just needs to be oiled. It feels kind of dry. Um, so normally I’m not bothered when I can feel my fingers come into contact with the.

With the, with the fret board, but when I’m doing a bend and I can kind of feel like dry fingers, fingers dragging across it, a dry fret board, it’s kind of a weird feeling. And I, I’m not, I love that feeling.

It’s really not too bad. I think that the switching is down here, it’s smooth. I think it like stays into place. It doesn’t like do like some switches don’t stay, it stays in place. I did find myself worried about accidentally hitting it during practice, but I don’t really think that happened. I’m more worried about accidentally doing that coil split because it’s a push down action.

Um, But thankfully I like both of those sounds, uh, during the practice I did, I S I already mentioned, I felt like I really preferred the, what I was doing, the bridge position to have the more vintage-y sound. Um,

but that was for when I was playing more like rhythm stuff.

And then when I was going for a solo, I liked hitting that serious switch to get along.

yeah. Yeah. I think that this guitar and I are going to be friends. And I think you’re going to see in a lot of demos. I think it’s a nice guitar. I think it’s fair for the price. And I’ve really loved that fender did at least a couple of more unique finishes. Um, I was into this and I was into the, uh, they’re calling it the mercury finish.

It reminds me of the antique wood finishes. Like it looks like, um, What Charlie rich would play at his core nada to Charlie pride, Charlie private placements, Cornetto to, uh, so that really appealed to me. And I thought that was pretty, but this is special. Yes. It’s look at the back now. Um, And I normally don’t do dark.

It’s hard if so, where a lot of dark clothing, but this video is officially quite long. Um, please, if you plan on getting one of these checkout river.com, the link in the video description, we do get 1% cash back on your purchases there, and it doesn’t cost you any extra money. And then when you record sweet, sweet music, uh, You can release it via district kid.

And you can use the link in our video description for that as well. And you’ll say 7% in your first year of district kid, and we’ll get, we’ll get five bucks. I’m not afraid to say it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Like, it’d be a little thing counts. Um, but please like comment, subscribe below, check out the pod cast.

You’re going to, again, you’re going to see this in a lot of demo videos. I can tell. But, uh, thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding. Once again, my name is Emily goodbye.