A Mid-60's Custom Color Dot Neck Jazz Bass.

1966 Fender Jazz Bass.

This lightweight custom color Jazz Bass weighs just 8.90 lbs. Asymmetrical double cutaway, contoured solid alder body. One-piece 'birds-eye' maple neck with a very fast medium profile. Bound rosewood veneer fretboard with 20 original medium frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Matching Sonic Blue headstock with transitional "Fender" in gold with black trim and five patent numbers in black below, "Jazz Bass," "Trade Mark," and "Electric Bass" in black on three lines beside, and "Offset Contour Body" at the ball end of the headstock. Single round string tree. Individual Fender tuners with oval "paddle" metal buttons. Four-bolt neck plate with the Fender backward "F" logo and the serial number "137258" above it. Two eight-polepiece, single-coil pickups with outputs of 6.00k and 6.59k. Three-layer white/black/white plastic pickguard with bevelled edges and eleven screws. Three controls (two volume blend controls, one for each pickup, and one master tone control) and jack socket, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. With the original thumb rest on the treble side of the pickguard. Black plastic knobs with white markings. Combined four-saddle bridge/tailpiece. With both original bass pickup and bridge pickup covers, the bridge cover with the original mute. The neck is dated "7 JAN 66 A" and the pots are dated "137 6611" (CTS, March 1966). The sonic blue finish has uniformly and very slightly darkened by a shade.  There is some minor body checking and a fewvery slight' 'burn' marks to the finish where the guitar has been in contact with a guitar cord whilst in its case. Overall this forty-sven year old custom color Jazz bass is in exceptionally fine to near mint condition. Housed in it's original Fender three-latch, rectangular black hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

Sonic Blue is one of the rarest of the Fender custom colors. Many of Fenders colors were from the automotive industry and Sonic Blue was used on Cadillac automobiles for the year 1956 and then on Fender guitars from 1960 thru 1972.

One of the very few early 1966 Jazz Basses featuring binding added to the dot inlay neck, an upgrade consistent with other high-end instruments in the Fender line and their competitors. The bound neck was purely cosmetic, and was augmented by block inlays by mid-1966.

"After the introduction of the Jazzmaster in 1958, Fender needed an upscale model to augment the bass line. In 1960, Leo's new Jazz Bass borrowed the offset waist and part of the name from the Jazzmaster. It also featured a narrower neck width, which was faster playing than the Precision Bass" (J.W. Black and Albert Molinaro, The Fender Bass, p. 25).