I have long been in love with the Fender Jazz Bass. As a young player, I found myself drawn to the Jazz Bass — how it looked, felt, and sounded. A Jazz Bass just felt like home when I had it in my hands. I liked the slender neck, the way the two-pickup configuration allowed for a variety of tones, and how favoring the bridge pickup allowed the bass to punch through the mix. For a long time I wanted an Amercan-made Jazz, but I couldn’t afford it. Toward the end of my college years, however, a friend who worked at a local music store sold me one he got in on trade — at a price that I’m told later got him in trouble with management. (Thanks, Jeff!) That ’93 American Jazz Standard is still one of my main instruments, but I’ve added a number of other Jazz Basses alongside it, including a ’76 that is killer. Over the past three decades, I’ve played a host of Jazz Basses, from vintage ’60s models to the reissues and modern updates Fender has produced in that same time span. Within the context of that experience, I suggest that the newest iteration of the American Jazz Bass, the American Ultra Jazz, is one of the smartest redesigns of this iconic instrument I’ve seen in years. The main updates to the Standard Jazz on the Ultra fall into a few key areas: neck shape, fingerboard radius, body contour, bridge, and electronics. So, yeah, about everything has been tweaked. The Ultra Jazz neck has a modern “D” shape (making it thinner than the modern “C” shape), and the neck heel tapers where it connects to the body. Additionally, the fingerboard radius starts at 10" at the nut and gradually gets flatter as you move up the neck, to end at 14". As a result, the bass gets easier to play (on several levels) as you move up the neck. When I compared the body of the Ultra to my ’76, the main differences I saw concerned the heel shape and the “offset waist contour,” which extends a bit longer into the upper horn on the Ultra. The heavy-mass bridge is a welcomed feature for those of us who have long enjoyed Badass-style bridges, as are Fender’s Ultra Noiseless pickups, which provide vintage tones without the traditional hum associated with them. For the electronics on the Ultra Jazz, Fender redesigned their active/passive electronics to pair perfectly with these specific pickups. (For more specific details on the features, check out the bass on Fender's website.) Our review bass came in lovely cobalt blue and featured a black-bound maple fingerboard with subtly figured black inlays. As luck would have it, its arrival coincided with a sub request from Nashville bassist and singer Matt Coen, who asked me to fill in for him for two months while he recovered from shoulder surgery. Matt’s band, Radio Pirate, is popular in the local Nashville music scene and plays two-to-three-hour sets of Top 40 tunes — a great laboratory in which to try out the Ultra Jazz and the versatility it promises. Rod Taylor performing with