The stained, oiled and waxed swamp ash body. |
A swamp ash Jazzmaster body is used, again licensed by Fender. The routs in the body are not the standard Jazzmaster rout, which removes a lot of wood from the upper horn to make room for the extra electronic circuitry the Jazzmaster has. The Fuzzblaster routs remove a minimum of wood, and in particular do not remove any wood from the top horn, as there are no switches or circuits up there. As a result, it is a fairly tight squeeze to get all the electrics in and the body is heavier than a Jazzmaster. If you like your guitars feather light you may find the Fuzzblaster rather tiresome, but in my experience this is a price worth paying for extra tone and sustain gained by the heavier bogy. The Fuzzblaster body is sanded smooth, dyed a “antique pine” colour, then sanded using Danish oil as a wetting agent, then given a few more very thin coats of Danish oil before being finished with “antique pine” tinted beeswax. The result is a colour reminiscent of the butterscotch colour found on many fenders, but rather than being opaque the finish is completely translucent, so all the character of the wood can be seen. The resulting finish is a very mellow sheen, certainly not high gloss, and can easily be patched up in case of any dings in the future.
Pickups
Top quality pickups are used in the Fuzzblaster. In this case a calibrated set of Bareknuckle BKP91s are used which are wound a little hotter than standard P90s. They give an excellent full and powerful sound with added bite and grit, but retain all the openness and clarity one would expect from a single coil.
Electronics
The Fuzzblaster does away with the Jazzmaster’s separate rythum and lead circuits, instead using a simple one volume, one tone, and three way switch circuit. The removal of the mostly unused circuits on the Jazzmaster make it very easy to dial in the required tone. Because high spec pickups are begin used, it would be a shame to waste them by using second rate electronic components, so the best possible parts are sourced. 500K CTS audio (non-linear) pots are used (rather than 250K pots on a Jazzmaster) to ensure a very bright tone and to fully represent the bite of the pickups. A very high spec Hovland Musicap capacitor is used on the tone circuit. Many guitars use very cheap capacitors which often result in tone controls that only have an effects in the first ¼ of a turn. Using a top quality capacitor and an audio tone potentiometer means the tone control is entirely usable and useful, giving a smooth roll of the treble frequencies consistently though the whole sweep of the knob. An audio volume pot is also used which again means the volume control is useful throughout the whole range of movement, not just the first quarter. The jack socket is moved from a perpendicular socket fixed to the scratch plate as on the Jazzmaster, to a discreet chrome plate and socket on the lower bout of the guitar. This cleans up the look of the guitar, and gets rid of slightly awkward look of the lead sticking straight out of the front of the guitar. It also means the tone and volume pots can be moved further down the scratch plate, in order that they do not foul the vibrato arm. Chrome knurled volume and tone knobs are used, as on a Telecaster. The three way pickup selector is on the bottom horn where it is out of the way, yet easily accessible as on the Jazzmaster All the cavities housing the electronics, including the underside of the scratch plate are thoroughly shielded with thick copper shielding tape and all the wires used are the cloth waxed type so external interference and buzz is reduced to a minimum. In addition, the pickups are a reverse wound, reverse polarity set, which mean they have the hum cancelling properties of a humbucker when they are both in use. BridgeA roller bridge is used on the Fuzzblaster. This is a significant improvement over the “rocking” bridge used on the Jazzmaster, where the use of the vibrator moves the whole bridge back and forward as the strings stretch and contract, and tuning is reliant on the bridge returning to the exact position it started in and a great deal of good fortune. This design is fundamentally flawed, and there are well documented problems of the strings not returning to pitch after using the vibrato, and buzzing. The roller bridge on the Fuzzblaster is fixed in position (i.e doesn’t rock) and has small oiled rollers under each string that allow the string to stretch and contract with no friction. This resolves the tuning and buzzing problems inherent in most Jazzmasters. The roller bridge is fully adjustable for action and intonation. In addition, another common problem with the Jazzmaster set up is that there is precious little break angle of the strings over the bridge which can cause lots of irritating buzzing and rattling. It also means the strings are not pressing down with much pressure on the bridge so don’t transfer so much vibration to the body. This has implications for tone and sustain. There is even an after market part that can be fitted to the bridge to increase the break angle, which is proof of the endemic problem with the bridge design. On the Fuzzblaster, the break angle over the bridge is not a problem. Vibrato
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