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I put a mute on my Marr Jaguar but it's lack of use has me going to take it off. I thought of outting it on my Jazzmaster but it wouldn't look right - mainly because they are so uncommon, so why is this? It's been around for pretty much the same time as the Jag which came with one?

Kylef wrote:it's lack of use has me going to take it off.

You answered your own question.

Why would I want one? I can mute strings with my palm just fine.

Would a mute even fit on a jazzmaster? looks like there isn't much room there with the bigger pickups

Technically, I think it was because the Jazzmaster was designed to appeal to jazz players who liked playing mellow sounds whilst sitting down. The jag was a reworking to appeal more to all the kids who liked the Jazzmaster but wanted to play surf rock. One of the weirder things about Fender was he almost never went back and redesigned anything- except the precision bass and Duo Sonic- just made new models to take advantage of new ideas.
Or some such.

Kylef wrote:I put a mute on my Marr Jaguar but it's lack of use has me going to take it off. I thought of outting it on my Jazzmaster but it wouldn't look right - mainly because they are so uncommon, so why is this?

Jazzmasters never came with them as standard, so they're not able to be retrofitted without moderately annoying modifications. You'd need to drill the plunger hole in the body, drill a matching hole in the pickguard, then drill pilot holes for the adjustment/fastening screws. Any of the above being 'off' would compromise the functionality of the mute.

Member 'MelWaldorf' installed one in a three pickup Jazzmaster, you can see the cached images if you do a Google search.

A mute on a jaguar should, properly, have a hole under the bridge with a spring and some kind of plunger thing that are used to "click" the mute on or off, under the strings. The Jazzmaster, which came out three or four years before the Jaguar, never had a mute- that was supposed to be some kind of "revolutionary feature" introduced on the Jaguar. Installing a mute properly on a Jazzmaster should involve routing or drilling a big hole under the bridge- would you really want to do that?

I love the "look" of the original Fender Mute, but like most everyone else... I never actually use it. I put them on my Squier VM's strictly for appearance sake and don't even bother to route out the body for the plunger and spring. If the mute will clear the bridge pickup on a Jazzmaster (I don't think it will) you could do the same thing if you like the way it looks but never actually use it.

I view the mute like I do all those bridge and pickup covers Fender would include... an extraneous piece that you'd remove and try not to misplace.

Fearnot wrote:I view the mute like I do all those bridge and pickup covers Fender would include... an extraneous piece that you'd remove and try not to misplace.

Why? It interferes with nothing when it's not engaged.

andy_tchp wrote:

Fearnot wrote:I view the mute like I do all those bridge and pickup covers Fender would include... an extraneous piece that you'd remove and try not to misplace.

Why? It interferes with nothing when it's not engaged.

maybe mine was installed wrong, but I couldn't use the bridge cover with the mute on...

jakeisjake wrote:maybe mine was installed wrong, but I couldn't use the bridge cover with the mute on...

Interesting. I just popped the bridge cover on (I've never used one) and the mute still worked fine.

I can see that if the bridge and mute were adjusted slightly differently in either direction things would become a bit of a mess and not function correctly, to the point that the bridge cover probably wouldn't even be able to be installed. Just another of the 'balancing acts' when it comes to these I think

andy_tchp wrote:

jakeisjake wrote:maybe mine was installed wrong, but I couldn't use the bridge cover with the mute on...

Interesting. I just popped the bridge cover on (I've never used one) and the mute still worked fine.

I can see that if the bridge and mute were adjusted slightly differently in either direction things would become a bit of a mess and not function correctly, to the point that the bridge cover probably wouldn't even be able to be installed. Just another of the 'balancing acts' when it comes to these I think

Yeah, part of the appeal for the mute was the ability to leave the cover on and still be able to play muted. I'm probably going to add a mute to my VMJag. I play with a light palm mute most of the time anyway, so a mute set to just barely be there would allow me more control over my picking.

I'm a big fan of the mute. I really miss my jag because of it. Lots of fun sounds in there that are different then palm muting. Now I really want a vintage jag again!