Anyone gotten a Black Bobbin Jazzmaster?

[Gonkulator]

Better than the stuff from Nash I guess?

That isn't exactly that hard to accomplish.

[Cob]

the whole black bobbin scam is criminally lame. they sell rebranded lollar pickups. what possible difference could there be + or minus 5 percent on the wind? puh lease

not to mention the headstocks are puke-tastic. for 3 grand you can and should get a real Fender.

Different alnico magnets's and modeled after darker sounding 58 pickups. They certainly sound different from the regular Lollars. Differences are subtle but they're there. Whether that's worth it to the player is in, well, the ears of the beholder.

[algeriet]

Gonna ignore many of the toxic words in the discussion so far and leave my 0.02€:

The standard specs he's laid out for the guitar seems tasteful and very vintage-y. You can tell that Shelby, like the realest ones here, knows what makes a good Jazzmaster.

Iconic Guitars, who builds these in partnership with Black Bobbin (look up the term 'private label') make amazing instruments and are not partsmasters in the slightest. Some have mentioned Nash and Danocaster, which from what I am aware, build guitars out of parts, and while they may be nice (everything I've seen from the latter has been great, the foremost not so much), they are still not in-house built from scratch, which Black Bobbin seems to have been accused of doing earlier in this thread.

To further my reasoning: Cliff Cooper didn't start out building Orange amps, instead he enlisted Mats Mathias from Matamp to build them under the Orange name. Is Orange/Cliff Cooper a phoney because of this? No.

The headstock? Personal taste. I personally dig it a lot. Only thing I'd change is to stop using Mastery and use the Descendant vibrato and Companion bridge instead. #shotsfired

Also how can you deny that this is a sick JM?



Disclosure:
Never purchased anything from Shelby or am in some sort of relaxed Instagram DM basis with him so this isn't biased whatsoever.

tl;dr
Shelby doesn't put these guitars together from parts.

[pscates]

I think a nice headstock on any Fender that isn't a Telecaster would be that cool-looking one Ron Thorn uses on his California Special guitars. It's basically a Strat headstock, minus the batwing/sharp-point scallop. But this one is just so exaggerated/goofy, paired with such an attractive, clean-line body of the Jazzmaster. IMO. YMMV. FWIW.

I'd dig that crazy headstock on some deliberately funky, kitschy 1960's Japanese/Italian-inspired thing, absolutely. I like funky, crazy headstocks. I simply dislike it on a sedate, classy Jazzmaster, that's all. That's just "personal taste" too.

Headstock aside, that is indeed a beautiful, "sick" Jazzmaster. See-through blonde with a gold pickguard is one of my all-time favorite looks on a Jazzmaster. Or any guitar, actually. And that dark fingerboard look so nice, after a year of seeing so much streaky "chocolate milk" Pau Ferro at Fender.com.

[algeriet]

I think a nice headstock on any Fender that isn't a Telecaster would be that cool-looking one Ron Thorn uses on his California Special guitars. It's basically a Strat headstock, minus the batwing/sharp-point scallop. But this one is just so exaggerated/goofy, paired with such an attractive, clean-line body of the Jazzmaster. IMO. YMMV. FWIW.

I'd dig that crazy headstock on some deliberately funky, kitschy 1960's Japanese/Italian-inspired thing, absolutely. I like funky, crazy headstocks. I simply dislike it on a sedate, classy Jazzmaster, that's all. That's just "personal taste" too.

Headstock aside, that is indeed a beautiful, "sick" Jazzmaster. See-through blonde with a gold pickguard is one of my all-time favorite looks on a Jazzmaster. Or any guitar, actually. And that dark fingerboard look so nice, after a year of seeing so much streaky "chocolate milk" Pau Ferro at Fender.com.

You have a fair point, the headstock is kitschy 60's Japanese/Italian, but still I see the Bigsby design behind it and like it nonetheless.

In the end, I admire crazy designs such as this Specimen one off for the frontman in Franz Ferdinand:



I mean LOOK at dat headstock!

[Mechanical Birds]

Yeah that looks awesome and so does the BB one. For me the sharper the points the cooler it looks. I’ll take a CBS headstock over an original Strat shape any day

[algeriet]

Yeah that looks awesome and so does the BB one. For me the sharper the points the cooler it looks. I’ll take a CBS headstock over an original Strat shape any day

Big headstock crew, unite!

[garyptaszek]

Can’t we just unify? I’m a partsmaster, you’re a partsmaster, we’re all partsmasters. That chair over there, partsmaster, that ikea wardrobe, partsmaster, your custom shop fender, partsmaster...

[JSett]

Can’t we just unify? I’m a partsmaster, you’re a partsmaster, we’re all partsmasters. That chair over there, partsmaster, that ikea wardrobe, partsmaster, your custom shop fender, partsmaster...

Gary, we've spoke about this before... please don't assume my Fender

[wooderson]

CBS headstocks rule, if I ever build my own partscaster I'm going with a white on white big headstock Strat ala Michael Karoli.

[daysleeperjeff]

I wouldn’t buy a Black Bobbin guitar but only because I’m one that really hates the headstock design. Just looks so wrong with the body to me. On the otherhand I’ve never seen a redesign or mod of a Jazzmaster body or headstock that has improved on the original from any builder. I just think it’s pretty much a perfect design as is.

Other than that I actually love Shelby’s business plan. He’s just assembling and reselling guitars with all the specs he loves and can stand behind. What’s wrong with that?

If you could buy a Fender Jazzmaster right now with a 7.25 radius neck, 250k pots, an actual good looking tort Pickguard, a bridge that is matched properly to the neck radius, and reliable quality control for under $3000, yeah I guess I’d go with the Fender…but you can’t and Fenders quality has been slipping even on the high end US built stuff. He saw a hole in the market and took it. I think it’s smart.

If you want to build your own partscaster for cheaper then do it. He’s just offering a service to source the parts, manage the project, assemble and setup.

You can also fix your car cheaper too if you do it yourself. Not everyone wants to do that.

[sugarandopium]

the whole black bobbin scam is criminally lame. they sell rebranded lollar pickups. what possible difference could there be + or minus 5 percent on the wind? puh lease

not to mention the headstocks are puke-tastic. for 3 grand you can and should get a real Fender.

Different alnico magnets's and modeled after darker sounding 58 pickups. They certainly sound different from the regular Lollars. Differences are subtle but they're there. Whether that's worth it to the player is in, well, the ears of the beholder.

I’m really neutral on this guy and everything he does.
I’ve been playing since the mid 90s and I remember what it was like before offsets were popular so I’m kind of okay with anything and everything that simply brings us options.

But:
A) Bigsby headstock was somewhat of an innovation, that Leo improved greatly upon. I don’t feel like it needed to be resurrected. It looks very wrong on a JM.

B) the lollar BB pups are really the coolest thing this guy has done. They’re quite different being a2, and if you’re one of us who prefers the a2 to the a5 I’d argue that the sound differences are more than subtle (case in point antiquity 1 and antiquity 2)

[LonzoB]

The headstock is awesome! It's between a strat and the bigsby (which fender copied/modified). Seems like a perfectly logical progression from Tele to Strat to JM. Looks kinda deluxe.

BB is partnered with Iconic Guitars which gets rave reviews here - so I'm definitely curious.

Also, if a fender floats your boat - get one. I like a quality guitar with nice features.

[LonzoB]

the whole black bobbin scam is criminally lame. they sell rebranded lollar pickups. what possible difference could there be + or minus 5 percent on the wind? puh lease

not to mention the headstocks are puke-tastic. for 3 grand you can and should get a real Fender.

Order regular Lollers if you like. I like the headstock a lot. And... not all Fenders are created equal. Most are mass produced with minimal QC.

[Gav Haus]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the headstock looks like a Smurfs hat. It’s an absolute horror-show.