Fender’s Standard J Bass Returns! The Fender Standard Jazz Bass is back and poised to take your bass playing higher! A performance- and value-packed instrument for a new generation of players, the Standard Jazz Bass is powered by updated ceramic single-coil pickups to deliver the iconic J Bass tone that rocked the music world when the model was first introduced in 1960. At the time, Fender felt that the instrument, with a thinner neck and greater tonal flexibility than the Precision, would appeal to jazz bassists — and indeed, it did. In addition, it caught the attention of rock, funk, and fusion bass wizards such as Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Sly and the Family Stone’s Larry Graham, and Weather Report’s Jaco Pastorius, who famously removed the frets from his axe, and in the process created a new instrument category: the fretless Jazz Bass. As different as their music was,