Here's my review:
Belated NGD. I finally got in touch with the guys who make guitars for Bacchus. They started distributing guitars locally under the name Riverhead. My best friend and I picked from the first batch of Filipino-made Jazzmasters. Priced higher than Squier, but lower than Fender Mexico. Here's some pictures and a review:
Here's my initial assessment for the Philippine-made Riverhead Jazzmaster from Freedom Music.
The neck on mine is a slightly beefier modern C (although my best friend's Riverhead JM has a soft-v, so it might vary from guitar to guitar) and has a really nice satin finish. Headstock is a vintage-accurate JM shape with Kluson-style tuners and the truss rod adjust is at the heel like a good vintage Jazzy.
EDIT: THE SIDE DOT MARKERS ARE RIGHT IN BETWEEN THE SLAB BOARD AND THE NECK WOOD. Really good woodworking there.
Here are some photos of the fretwork and side markers on my best friend's Jazzmaster:
Body shape is really close to FMIC spec and only varies in terms of screw placement and possibly the roundovers around the lead circuit's volume and tone controls. It is possible to get US/MIM/Squier Mascis pickguards to fit if you're willing to make new screw holes. I'm also a bit iffy about the neck pocket as it's a good 2mm shallower than the typical FMIC route. If they did a shallower pocket for break angle, I'd understand but I think an angled neck pocket would be a better option and wouldn't have you cranking the bridge up off the thimbles. IIRC the finish is lacquer.
Hardware is basically what you'd find on a Squier, but slightly better quality. No stamp or lock on the tailpiece, but the one I got floats smoothly and stays in tune. Doesn't snag like the trem units on the RJ Mustang copy or some Squiers. Bridge is a bit heavier than I expected, but the tooling for the height screws is a bit loose and needs a bit of nail polish to prevent slippage. Also worth nothing that the screw heads on the pickups are a bit too large. Significantly larger than most Jazz Bass/Jazzmaster screw heads and could be a bit problematic when lowering pickup height. It was an issue for me but YMMV. Also, in my photos I flipped the bridge around for ease of intonation but I tried setting it up with the bridge facing the right way and it works fine on my gauge/tuning.
The plastics on this thing are okay, but I still get iffy about people who don't match the colors of the trem tip to the pickup covers. Covers and switch tip are a nice cream color but the trem tip is stark white. Minor issue with the font size on the knobs. Right color, but that font size is huge. I thought the guard was photo tort at first, but upon closer inspection I found that it was real tort, albeit a very thin layer. Not vintage accurate though, it's black/white/tort instead of mint/black/mint/tort.
Haven't opened this thing up yet, but as far as electronics go that's where I find the most issues. No problems with noise, but the tone control on the lead circuit is absolutely useless. I think they used the wrong taper pot on the tone knob, so it only really rolls off your tone when you're close to zero. Minor issue since pots are easy to replace.
I set mine up with a heavy set of strings for B-b baritone tuning and plugged it into my gigging rig. Was definitely not disappointed. The pickups are surprisingly good sounding JM pickups. I mean, I wouldn't replace them if I wasn't looking for a specific bridge pickup sound. I'll probably end up keeping the neck pickup. Great example of how decent JM pickups should sound.
VIDEO
Here's a clean demo I did with all the positions on the guitar. All clean except for the rhythm circuit overdub which had chorus, delay, and reverb.
FINAL WORD:
Generally better than Fender Japan in terms of feel Get better pots Get new knobs and a better guard Swap for locking trem That's well under 30k brand new including upgrades. It can hang with a Classic Series Fender or probably some American Standards. FMIC doesn't have a guitar with these specs in that bracket since it's above Blacktop and below Classic Player in terms of pricing.
It's not a modding platform, that's for sure. It's a solid guitar out of the box after setup.
