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Top 5 Jazz guitars

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Traditional Jazz requires a fairly specific Guitar sound. Usually a very clean dry tone, with tiny to no effects. But a hint of reverb is okay. The neck pickup is used with the resultant sound required to be clear enough to pickup the subtle nuances and articulation of the playing. Jazz Guitarists need to carefully think about their Guitar.

Jazz has been around for many years, so there is a wide selection of instruments available. Traditionally Jazz Guitars are hollow body semi acoustics and these have tended to favor P90 or Humbucker style pickups to produce the required sound. Here’s the list of the 5 classic Jazz guitars favored by Jazz Guitarists around the world.

1 Gibson ES150

Made famous to the jazz community by Charlie Christian the ES 150 became his guitar. The ES150 became one of the world’s first commercially available electric guitars. With its single coil pickup fitted at the neck and its acoustic shaped body with f holes - the 150 has that sweet warm jazz tone that became a world favorite.

2 Gibson L5

Another of Gibson’s Jazz power trio (the others are the ES150 and the ES175) - the L5 features a huge resonant body. With a history that goes back nearly 90 years the L5 has changed a little over this time and has featured different pickups (from P90’s to Humbuckers). As the prestige rhythm guitar it has been played by a variety of greats including Wes Montgomery.

3 Gibson ES-175

With it’s stylish Florentine single cutaway - the ES175 represented a departure for Gibson from their usual design - Debuting in 1949 - the 175 has been associated with a variety of Jazz greats from Herb Ellis to Pat Metheny.

4 Gretsch Country Gentleman/Nashville

While Gretsch are not considered jazz guitars per se - both the Country Gent and the Nashville are able to produce both versatile and authentic jazz tones. Both guitars offer a range of controls for adapting the tone of the guitar and can produce some versatile jazzy results - whilst the FiterTron pickups produce something that’s unlike it’s Gibson counterparts.

5 Fender Telecaster

With it’s sweet and mellow neck pickup tone the telecaster offers something a tiny different that the usual Jazz fare - Traditionally a country guitar the telecaster has been featured with Jazz artists including Ed Bickert and Mike Stern.

A little about Jazz

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Jazz, an American classical music, is a diverse genre of music that stems from native American and African music. Inspired by blues music, Jazz first became popular in the early 1920’s in clubs in cities like New Orleans and Chicago. Jazz was so popular in the 1930’s that there were even white jazz singers. Big bands such as Ben Goodman and Glen Miller came into play. But some viewed them as swing more than jazz.

I’ve often found Jazz to be sad and mostly about heartache and troubles of life. To me, it’s more like they were based off of the performers lives. Do you know that a lot of Jazz performers died from drug and alcohol abuse. Jazz is based off of a classical background and you have to learn the chords and scales of the songs. It takes improvisation and lots of imagination to play it well. Jazz can be quite difficult, but for some jazz is just in the blood.

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