However, the Jazzmaster did not take off with Jazz musicians, but rather with Surf Musicians who used this bar to great effect for various watery warbles and wave-like dips synonomous with the surf-guitar sound. The sound of a Jazzmaster drenched in Reverb with the player warbling and dipping that synchronized floating tremolo is the stereotype of the sound of surf guitar music. As the sixties moved from west coast Surf to English Beatlemania and then Acid Rock, nobody was interested in vibrato bars much anymore, except maybe Jimi Hendrix, who also played a Jazzmaster but he never u sed the bar that much on his. But in the days of surf, Bass VIs, Jaguars, and Jazzmasters seemed like they were everywhere.

In the 1970's and 80's, these guitars were discontinued (Jaguar, Bass VI), or reduced to the bargain rack. Most of the players at the time seldom, if ever used the Vibrato bar. Tom Verlaine used it Sparingly, Ric Ocasek put a Giblitrar Harmonica Bridge on his 74' Jazzmaster and had the bar removed, Sonic Youth used them for queasy seasick noises as did my bloody valentine. But most of the time, if you saw a Jazzmaster, it was just jangling and plonking along in the background playing rhythm guitar beside another guy with the usual trio of a STrat, Tele, or Les Paul of some sort.

When the 1990's came, most of the bands around at that time had these guitars but they were instead looking to them because they were cheap. The word of the day was to put on a Gibson Tune-O-Matic bridge wrapped in electric tape, remove the bar, and put on some Dean Markley or Ernie Ball .010s at the lightest. This is truly where the b.s. around this being a bad vibrato begin. To add to confusion further, people often got Jaguars, Jazzmasters, Mustaangs, Jag-Stangs, and whatnot confused. Some people did not even know they had a vibrato unit, others knew they did but figured it was a piece of crap. The general line of thought at the time though was that "whammy bar" was an "80's thing" (despite the guy in the Toadies playing atrat with a Floyd), and so it was de-rigeur-standard to fit your Jaguar, Jazzmaster, or Bass VI with some kind of Gibson-style bridge and no bar. That's how Kurt Cobain, Gavin Rossdale, and others were doing it.

Trem Lok - On official Fender units, and some import units, there's a sliding "button" that slides under the pivot plate to "Block" the vibrato in it's "center-most" position, should the unlikely event that a string breaks happen during a show.

The Bridge - The "Sychronized" part of this system, is the bridge. The Bridge itself is a U-shaped channel that houses the bridge saddles, and sits on two metal legs, and pivots back and fourth under the downward tension of the strings, holding it in place, and allowing the bridge to move WITH the strings. Each saddle, at least on the original variants, allowed for horizontal and vertical positioning of the strings for intonation and custom string spacing.

Range of this System - The depth of the dive is pretty consistant from instrument to instrument, dropping down to "B" usually being the most common with .009-.042 gauge strings tuned to E-standard.

To disassemble an offset with one of these for my kind of service, first you remove the strings, then there's six screws holding the tailpiece on, and the bridge lifts right out (assuming stock bridge here).

The Mechanism for the vibrato itself consists of a tailplate, a knife edge, an "S" shaped piece of medal which the collet for the vibrato bar sits in, another retainer piece for the spring, and then the spring and spring retainer + a screw. The Trem Lock button (if so equipped) is just a screw on slide switch with a metal retainer on the bottom that slides under hte lip of the plate.

Let's start with the Trem Lok feature. For my purposes, I always disable this in the OFF position when it's present. This was a feature developed in a time when manufacturing tolerances for guitar products overall were not nearly as tight and defined as they are now. Leo's design for this vibrato was VERY ahead of it's time and that was one of it's achilles heels. The reason is my setups use .009-.042 gauge strings at heaviest ~ but more on that detail later ~ and modern light guitar strings can be VERY sturdy if they are reputable (especially what I use), so I never break strings, I just play em' till their dead as a doornail and/or won't stay in tune with each other when tuned up to pitch. This renders this feature moot. But I like the look of it, so I'll usually tighten the device in the OFF position with a pair of vice grips - and then never touch it again. I think the 15 years I've owned my Jaguar, I've only used the Trem Lock once - was not impressed.

The next piece of the setup I go after is disassembling the entire vibrato unit. This starts by removing the bar (if not done already - it just pulls out on most models), then unscrewing the spring, spring retainer, and spring screw, and setting those aside. Then the entire pivot plate can be guided out of the assembly. Lastly is the knife edge - which is removed by taking out the three screws near the hole where the pivot plate comes out.

For the knife edge, I like to grind off any burrs, and make it flat, shiny, and make the knife edge uniform on both sides. The tip of the knife edges the plate rides on is like a "triangle" shape after the knife plate bends/tilts down. This is a big piece of why your Japanese offset will make weird PINGING noises when the bar is pushed down, that's really the sound of a dull knife edge, or a knife edge that was poorly milled - the pinging noise is that pivot plate sliding around. This is generally not a problem on vintage models. Import vibratos will need it even moreso.

Once the plate is milled, then it's re-attached with the bend facing DOWN - I've found various offsets where this was bent upward, putting the screws at a funky angle and making the pivot plate shift around (leading to tuning instability). I tried it facing up for a time, it was okay, but I prefr the stock Fender positioning.

Next is that blasted Collet. Fender's VM models from the mid 00's actually fixed this by having a screw in collet, but hte regular collet is good enough. Usually while I'm in there, I crimp them together, carefully. Yet another thing that helps more than anything, is to take the end of the bar that sits in the collet, and bent it just a little off the edge of a table, so it sits in place. This seems to fix that whole collet problem. I actually started doing this a little bit before Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar started doing it and it works well. That said, as long as the bar stays in place, there is no shame in having it flop around, after all, Edward Van-Halens' Floyd was like that.

With the collet addressed and the knife edge worked out, there's not a whole lot else to deal with here. Maybe just check the seating of the pivot plate and make sure it's good, then reinstall on the guitar.

Next, we shall address the Fender Jaguar/Jazzmaster bridge assembly.

The whole point of this bridge design was so that you could adjust the strings on your Fender Jaguar or JAzzmaster guitar not just for intonation and action, but also for preferred string spacing. That's why the saddles have multiple, individual grooves for each string. Unfortunatley, they are very shallow grooves, and the breakover angle over the bridge is VERY low. THat said, I think the breakover angle on Jaguar/Jazzmaster and similiar guitars with this vibrato tailpiece gets too much credit for causing *problems*. The REAL tormentor of the moment is actually the solidity of the assembly. YOu have to remember, this was designed in 1958, a time when tight tolerances were not as tight as they are now, and Leo I'm pretty sure was not going to spend an Edsel Ford level budget for a $900 car engine on a $345.99 (in 1958 bucks) electric guitar. It just makes no business or financial sense.

The first thing I do on ANY guitar using this bridge frame design (which also includes the Mustang and Jag-Stang), is use a very thin, about 1/12th of an inch of scotch tape, to jam up the threads and make sure the bridge does not lower. Vintage models don't have this problem, but the Japanese ones do, and a lot of imported Chinese and indonesian guitars do as well.

The next thing is to address the three main reasons your strings skip out of the saddles on a Jaguar or Jazzmaster.

First and foremost, is the weak springs used for the bridge saddles. I get the intent that is for them to return to a certain point on their screws when being intonated. However, you can get away with a much stronger spring, and we don't need more than two - one for the high "E", and one for the low "E". What this does is boxes in the other 4 saddles in the middle with a solid bridge saddle on both sides, and it stops movement. The other strings are held well enough in place with the factory springs to not have enough force to shuffle either side over. I use cut-in-half Humbucker springs for this job, particularly strong ones, especially for the High E string saddle.

Another problem with the bridge saddles is sometimes on import models, the saddles will lower as you play as well, I've even lost a couple grub screws on my Jaguar this way. I have two ways of fixing this. One way is to use the 3M tape method I use on the gross action adjustment screws, the other way is (if I have brass saddles at least, which is a softer metal) to take some slightly larger, import, strat saddle screws, and use these instead, and those will crossthread the threads and/or jam em' up good but leave em' just adjustable enough to get the fretboard radius set perfectly. My Jaguar was setup like this, and I've not had a single issue with lowering saddles since I did this in early 2006.

The last problem is the most prone string to jump out of it's slot - the low E string. There are 2 ways of taking care of this problem. One way is to do what I do, which is angle the saddle upwards as it points toward the higher strings - this tends to jam the low E in place, and since your pick attack is more than likely going to be stronger on a downpick than on the upstroke. The other way is to make a deeper groove in the bridge saddle (or even get an expendable one) and then adjust the saddle to compensate. I wanted to retain the string spacing mobility of the Jaguar to experiment when I did this, so I chose the fomrer over the latter. I also wanted to retain the classic Jaguar tonal qualities of such a bridge minus the headaches. That's the whole reason to this approach.

Then one more piece, carried over from the Mustang/Jag-Stang setup - is saddle height adjustment. The bridge saddles ARE truly meant only to conform to the fretboard radius, however, you do have some wiggle room to set your action up like this as well. So usually what I do is turn all the saddles until the screws are flush with the saddles, then crank the middle 4 up to conform to the fretboard (and maybe the low E as well). This prevents broken strings by them not rubbing against the bridge frame, and helps the "resonance" from the 3rd bridge effect (extra string behind the bridge) come through a bit cleaner - which is a big reason I play these guitars. It also makes doing ghost-note effects behind the bridge ring out more and have what sounds to me like more harmonic content.

An option that I sometimes migth have to do, especially with older Japanese Jaguar/Jazzmaster bridges, is get a shorter screw for the low-E bridge saddle, because when raised like this on the low E string, it tends to cause the screw to rattle against the low E string, and/or poke up. So I use a shorter one, since the low E will most likely be intonated closest to the tailpiece of all the saddles.

Which brings me to the next part of setting these guitars up.....

To shim...or not to shim...that is the question. Most guys shim the necks on these, I, for one, usually done, unless it really needs the toe end of the fretboard raised, which is very rare. My Jaguar and I think my Jazzmaster as well have their necks DECKED - no shim. however, if you are running a Jaguar with the flip-up mute, this is unavoidable because that mute addes about 1/2" more of mechanicals under the bridge that may interfere with the rocking bridge's ability to do it's job. It's the one trade off that I'm okay with, because I don't use the mute much, if at all, and I'm planning to maybe make a Panther SS with a recessed one in the future.

Once all this is sorted out, it's pretty much business as usual, install the strings, tune up to pitch, stretch them out properly, and get them right in this "equalibrium" of sorts where they don't drift sharp or flat beause they are stretched too much or too little.

the last bit, kinda' lifted from setting up a Mustang/Jag-Stang, is the rocker bridge during intonation. I like it to float. It's held in by string tension alone and has no mechanism that returns it to zero. Worst case scenario, you can just shove the bar down as far as it goes, and get the bridge to re-center on the strings, or alternatley, you can hand-center it (reccommended) before setting the intonation. It should stay there pretty well.

A misconception most outsiders to heavy rock have is that "shredders" have aggressive, hard, pick attacks - when in actuality, that's the very thing holding you back from high speed, and who were among the original high-speed rock guitarists? SURFERS of course! And these were their main instruments of choice (along with Mosrites). It's actually loosening up and not picking so hard that will help you maintain that speed! That said, there are some techniqujes that help.

With a lighter attack, you also can set the action way lower (My Jazzmaster has a 12" radius and plays like a Ibanez Jem), and also, I think it might lessen the chance of choking the strings out more. It also means you can get around using heavy strings, which then makes things even easier.

A big part of technique, especially the way I play on these, is palm muting the strings, not just in front of the bridge, but behind it! This does two things - allows you to chugga chugga like any other metalhead, allows you to lift up enough to let everything ring out, and with care, you can also palm mute BEHIND the bridge to kill off the harmonic content generated by the 3rd bridge effect, giving more of a Strat/Tele-like vibe when you want to. And having your palm anchored there in just the right amount also makes sure those strings stay on the saddles. Remember how you had to learn not to press the strings down too hard over the frets? Same idea, just with the meat of your hand instead of your fingers.

As for the whammy, a "false dive bomb" can be achieved using a lot of reverb and/or even just the harmonics from behind the bridge to mask the fall-off as it approaches the low B note...kind of like a villan going off a cliff in a movie...they're not going to show his face getting ripped off by rocks, but they will show him falling off the ledge, usually with some echo added to trail off during the fall. Also, there were a lot of cases in early 80's guitar before Floyd Rose was common place where a Strat could only go that low anyway. A lot of Ed's dives were not full dives for example on the original Frankenstrat, and the Jaguar and Jazzmaster fall comfortably within that range with a stock whammy.