The Jazz Birds... Misunderstood?

I want to talk a bit about our "Jazz Bird" instruments. A local musician and friend was checking out our guitars on hand. He was really impressed, he said. But the one thing that really surprised him was both how comfortable playable and great sounding our Jazz Birds are. And not a single lick of jazz was played, I assure you. So it occurred to me that the name is somewhat excluding all the other genres these fine instruments are extremely up to the task.

Lots of folks know that ted Nugent owns, plays and is noted for his use for decades of Gibson Byrdlands. His style of play is quite a distance from anything resembling jazz guitar. So let me give you my take on these Jazz Birds of ours.

They are light weight and well balanced to hold both standing up or sitting down. They do not feel big or bulky at all. I am comfortable with an ES335 sized instrument as well, but they feel slightly more bulky than the Jazz Bird to me.

Compared to single cut solid bodies, they have a better acoustic (un-amplified) tone. When amplified cleanly, they sound more full range yet less dark than most solid bodies. They also sustain at least as well.

If you give them some crunch, they begin to sound like countless other electric guitars with humbuckers, but they still maintain (to my ears) a fuller range of tone fidelity. When you get to tube breakup and on into distortion they sound very much like a single cut solid body, yet even then the highs and lows ring with a different fidelity to my ears.

With the lack of f-holes, our Jazz Birds are not squealing feedback mongers. They behave very nicely. However, they do very well in coaxing intentional feedback at gain and position / distance to the speakers (as they should).

Before I ever actually played a genuine floating bridge instrument, I had a presumption that all that would somehow be in the way and be uncomfortable while paying, but that is not the case at all. It took me no time to feel comfortable strumming and picking these guitars.

I also want to point out that our Jazz Birds are at Gibson LP scale (24 3/4") instead of the Byrdlands' slightly shorter 23 1/2" scale. This was intentional on my part because: Billy Byrd and Hank Garland (where the name Byrdland came from) in 1955 were experimenting with piano-style chord voicing and saxophone-style lines. The shorter 23 1/2" scale and thinner neck was intended to accommodate them for those more difficult and unusual fingerings. Well, that is not the case with our Jazz Bird. Lets not give up any real estate on the fret board unless we have to, I say.

I've been intending to do some HD video / audio of our guitars for some time now. When I do, I will make certain it is with a Jazz Bird first... or maybe a Jazz Bird versus single cut with the same amp settings. We'll see (and hear).