SOLD Fender Jazz Bass Burgundy Refinish, 1962

Here we have a Fender Jazz Bass dating to 7 May 1962 with a Burgundy refinish replacing the original Sunburst. This is a fairly rare Rosewood Slab Board model, indicating a type of neck built in Fullerton, California until mid 1962.

The Fender Jazz Bass was introduced in 1960, aimed at the Jazz bass players who had not adopted the Precision Bass or who wanted a thinner neck and more focused tone. The Offset Body that debuted on the 1958 Jazzmaster was used for the Jazz Bass body.

This Fender Jazz Bass is in good condition, with the original nitrocellulose lacquer Sunburst finish long ago replaced with a Burgundy coating. Originally, the controls consisted of concentric Volume and Tone pots for each of the two single-coil pickups. By 1961, this was simplified (reducing costs in the process) to two standard Volume controls plus a master tone. The neck on this Fender Jazz Bass is Maple with a Rosewood slab board stamped 7 May 62 A on the heel, clay position marker dots, and reflecting the era the Rosewood was sourced in Brazil. The fingerboard and frets are in great condition with very little wear. The original bridge and pickup covers are installed, and there’s a finger rest on the Faux-Tortoise pickguard. The neck plate has a 1962 serial number, and as has often happened, other numbers have been lightly engraved into the plating.

A non-original Fender hard shell case from the 1970s is included.

The term ‘Slab Board’ refers to the way the Rosewood fingerboard is applied to the neck and reflects the production process. Until 1959, Fender necks were almost exclusively one piece of Maple with the truss rod mounted from the back, the channel filled with a Walnut ‘Skunk Stripe’. Introducing the Jazzmaster in 1958, Fender wanted to appeal to Jazz guitarists, and part of that was the use of a traditional Rosewood fingerboard. The easiest way to add the Rosewood board is to glue a flat-bottomed piece of Rosewood to the flat top surface of a neck blank, and add a crown or radius to the top. On these necks, the truss rod is mounted before the fingerboard goes on, so there is no ‘Skunk Stripe’. This is a slab board, and it was used until mid 1962. By that point, Fender had developed production techniques to use a thin, even thickness piece of Rosewood to a radiused neck blank, saving on materials cost. Most Fenders with Rosewood boards have been built this way since.