Up for sale, a 1964 Fender Jazz Bass in perfect working order, featuring factory-installed gold hardware and the original custom color Olympic White nitro lacquer finish. While Pre-CBS era Fender Jazz Basses in custom colors enjoy a certain reverence for their relative rarity, the all-original gold hardware certainly elevates this example above the pack.
With extremely heavy playwear and a super jumbo refret, this Jazz Bass looks mean yet has a vitality and breadth of tones well-suited to virtually any genre. Tonewoods include an alder body, maple neck, and dark Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, and at 9lbs, this bass is a medium weight example that's well-balanced on a strap. Extremely responsive to player inputs, the original pair of black bobbin pickups yield a woody, deep sound. The tone is very balanced across all strings and in all registers, and the bridge pickup has plenty of midrange presence and growl, with more bass register oomph than is typically attributed to this position and pickup style. Playing with a pick further accentuates the burp and grind of this pickup, as does the fresh set of 45-100 roundwound strings. The neck pickup provides excellent contrast and is both fat and detailed, giving a Precision Bass a run for its money with a thickness and sub-bass rumble. Professionally setup here at Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar, this Jazz Bass has low action and accurate intonation.
Neck Specs:
-Wood: Maple
-Shape: Slender U at nut, notable additional heft and shoulder up the fingerboard, measuring .765” 1st fret, .980” 12th fret
-Fretboard: Brazilian rosewood, planed, retaining a 7 1/4” vintage-spec radius, new aged clay dot inlay
-Frets: Super Jumbo refret, moderate wear beneath all strings on frets 1-5, with wear growing fainter and extending primarily beneath the A and D strings until the octave
-Scale Length: 34”
-Nut: 1 1/2”, modern bone
-Headstock: Original waterslide decal
-Tuners: Original, gold-plated, reverse gear
-Neck heel: Feb, 1964 date stamp, truss rod nut flush with heel
-Serialization: Pre-L neck plate, gold plating on the back mirrors the original finish beneath the plate
Body Specs:
-Pickups: Black bobbin single coil x2, neck pickup rewound to spec
-Controls: Volume x2, Tone x1
-Harness: CTS 250k pots, dating to the 50th week of '63
-Hardware: Gold-plated, bridge with threaded saddles, majority of gold screws retained on hardware and plastics
-Plastics: Original nitrate tortoise pickguard and trio of knobs
The body retains its original Olympic White nitro lacquer gloss, and there is additional overspray on top of the original finish, ostensibly shot very early in the bass' lifetime, much of which has been worn through play and is otherwise indistinguishable from the original lacquer. This bass still exhibits the trio of tiny nail holes in the body used before the "paint stick" method was adopted for shooting lacquer at the Fender factory, and there is finish in these tiny holes.
There is prominent wear through the finish on the body perimeter, with heavy lacquer checking and various dings and battle scars from decades of consistent use. A deep S-shaped groove in the alder frames the bridge pickup, and there are a trio of small mounting holes on the back just south of the belly contour. One strap button mounting hole has been added on the inside edge of the bass-side body horn, and four similar small mounting holes are present on the outside edge of the treble-side horn, presumably for some sort of leg rest. There are also a couple added thumb rest mounting holes in the nitrate tortoise pickguard just north of the neck pickup. The finish has been worn to the bare maple on the neck profile, silky smooth and notably darkened, without any oils or additives on the wood.
A 1960s Fender black tolex hardshell case is included. With similar wear to the bass, the case does retain its original trio of latches and handle, with some separation along the back edges in particular and wear through some of the tolex on the lid as well. The raised Fender logo on the lid is also intact.