Guitar of the week!!

Very cool!

Well it was last week actually, I've been in Reformatland for the past few days. Here we have a new offering from Squier guitars This is the second to lowest priced guitar in the whole Squier range. Having said that this is far from the bottom as far as playability and coolness goes. They have called it Jazzmaster, I guess they're running out of names. Or perhaps it's a marketing ploy? "One day I'll grow up and get me a real Jazzmaster".
I believe it is part of the Squier Affinity range, made by the Chinese who are making some pretty fine instruments these days. It's just that we pay through the nose for anything Asian with a brand. So what have we got?
Firstly it is the true Fender off-set body shape of the Jazzmaster. The body is made of wood and of the thinner Affinity body thickness. Not quite as comfortable and a full depth body but standing hanging on a strap it does feel nice and slim. The neck was a surprise, slim, round, fat, wide, tapered, all of the above. Well put it this way is was very nice to play with a nicely finished fret job, no fret sprout on what has become the guitarists standard (well for Fender style guitars anyway), a 9.5" fret board radius featuring medium elephant frets. The hardware: You weren't really expecting gold plating were you? High quality Chinese chrome is what you get. The machine heads (for those oldies that remember Deep Purple) or tuners for my younger readers, were not too bad. The bridge is a Strat style hard-tail string-through so we have six smallish ferrules on the back of the body. This is good for a guitar of this price. Unfortunately the bridge saddles were moulded metal, not the best but don't take anything away from the tone, fortunately. The grub screws in the saddles were quite sharp if you're into palming but I could be nit picking here. The electrics: Squire have fitted a pair of quite loud but responsive duel coil humbuckers. I know this is usually the first mod on the list of upgrades but save your dollars and give these a good go. Rounding out the electrics is a one vol, one tone layout with Strat knobs and a pickguard mounted jack socket plus a three position toggle switch. Now if I was going to mod anything it would be the toggle switch. These can really let you down unexpectedly, I know this from a very bad experience once with my Jagmaster.
Could this be your main guitar? Well not for me but for a young beginner this would be awesome. Expect to pay under $500 for either the white or black Squier Jazzmaster.  Partner this with a $200 Fender Champion 20 and any aspiring rock star would be over the moon and be sounding great.
Thanks to my buddies down at KC's Rock Shop for allowing me to plunk away on their great stock of instruments so that I can bring you these reviews.

Squiers galore