We review the Fender Vintera III Mid ’60s Jazzmaster

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Designed to recreate the look, playing feel and sound of Fender’s iconic offset model from the mid 1960s, the Vintera III Jazzmaster has a sleek Jetsons-esque shape with a body made of alder, a traditional Fender tonewood that offers a balanced and lively tone with beefy mids and a robust low end.

Coupled to it via a four-bolt joint, the C-shaped maple neck starts off slim at the nut (1.65 inches) and widens moderately to slightly more than two inches at the 12th fret. Riding atop is a round-laminated 25.5 inch–scale rosewood fingerboard carrying 21 vintage-tall frets that provide slightly more height than vintage-style frets for ease of bending and a wider vibrato.

Dressed in Olympic White, and shown here in Candy Apple Red, the Vintera III Jazzmaster came out of its gig bag in tune and with a good factory setup. This cool-looking electric proved a satisfying player thanks to the neck’s slender profile, low, buzz-free action, polished frets and tuneful intonation.

(Image credit: Courtesy Fender)

While the fret tips were a bit sharp, the nut was well finished and properly notched so it doesn’t cause string pinching when tuning or using the trem. On a purely cosmetic note, and compared to the previous Vintera II Jazzmaster, the Vintera III features decals that are applied over the finish instead of under it, a genuine bone nut and period-correct clay fingerboard dots.

The vintage-style floating tremolo tailpiece and separate six-saddle adjustable bridge are a good combination that keeps the strings reliably in tune when you’re doing expressive warbles with the push-in bar. As per vintage spec, the tailpiece also features a lock button that’s intended to keep the guitar in tune if a string breaks. To use it, simply press the bar down, slide the button rearward, release the bar and rock on.

A detail of the Fender Vintera III Mid 60s Jazzmaster

(Image credit: Courtesy Fender)

To test it out, I purposely snapped the high E string and the system responded by keeping the remaining five strings in good relative tune. However, they all went sharp and had to be retuned anyway. The device can be adjusted to improve tuning stability, and since all it takes is a screwdriver and a little patience it’s worth checking out online videos or other sources that explain how to do it.

The Vintera III’s pickups are also era correct, as opposed to “decade based,” and are optimized to capture the essence of classic Fender single-coil tone, which the company describes as “rich and full-bodied with the distinctive depth and clarity that made these offset guitars the choice of surf, pop and indie musicians.”

Through my PRS DGT 15 head and cabinet — along with a selection of distortion, compression and delay pedals — this acoustically lively guitar was easy to dial in for everything from clean and funky rhythm work to distorted crunch and lead playing. It’s cool how the Lead/Rhythm circuit — which has an on/off slider switch and a pair of volume and tone thumbwheels for the neck pickup — allows you to preset two distinct sounds while still having full control over your lead tone when the slider is flicked to the down position.

A detail of the Fender Vintera III Mid 60s Jazzmaster

(Image credit: Courtesy Fender)

In this mode you can select neck, bridge or both pickups via the three-way toggle and control it with the volume and tone knobs. It’s a hip feature, especially for live performance, as it can lessen knob twiddling when going between clean and overdriven tones.

In all, the Vintera III Mid ’60s Jazzmaster is perhaps the best version that Fender has produced so far. It’s fun to play, it looks fantastic and the electronics enhance flexibility in ways that few vintage-style guitars can match. If there’s room in your garage for one of these retro-modern marvels, don’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

A detail of the Fender Vintera III Mid 60s Jazzmaster