2012 Fender FSR Antigua Jazz Bass, Antigua (Mexico)
Year: 2012
Finish/Color: Antigua Green
Made in: Mexico
Factory/Plant: Ensenada
FSR stands for Factory Special Run, instruments Fender builds outside the regular catalogue, either to a retailer’s order or as a short in-house run. The Antigua Jazz Bass was announced at Summer NAMM 2012, built in Ensenada as model 014-0053-350, and sold through 2013 at a street price of $749.99. How many left the factory, nobody outside Fender knows. No run size was ever published for it. What circulates instead is a figure of 250, repeated from seller listing to seller listing for a decade now, with no catalogue or factory source behind it. Its Precision sibling, announced the same week, has the rumoured number: 300 worldwide.
A 7.25″ board on a 2012 bass. The headline spec here is the fingerboard radius: 7.25″ (184.1 mm), the old pre-1983 vintage curve, on a Mexican production bass built in 2012. Add medium jumbo frets and a 1.5″ (38.1 mm) nut, and the neck has far more in common with a seventies Jazz than with anything else coming off the Ensenada line that year. Everything else is straight Fender: alder body, one-piece maple neck with maple fingerboard, chrome hardware, vintage-style four-saddle bridge, synthetic bone nut, and a pair of Standard Vintage Alnico Jazz Bass single-coils with the traditional volume-volume-tone layout.
That radius is the part people miss when they shop these on photos alone. A 7.25″ board rolls away under the fretting hand in a way a 9.5″ board simply does not, and it is the reason this bass feels older than its build date.
The Jazz Bass was there first. When Fender brought Antigua back in 1977 with the greenish, graduated tint that people picture today, the Jazz Bass was where that version of the finish landed, body and pickguard both, the full treatment. The Precision followed into the same catalogue run through 1979. So while the 2012 FSR is usually told as a Precision story, this is the reissue of the model that opened the second Antigua era.
Antigua divides people, and it always has. It was a finish invented to cover a manufacturing problem, it sold badly enough to be pulled twice, and it is now one of the most sought-after colours Fender ever put on a bass. Thirty-five years after the original run, Fender sprayed it on a Jazz Bass again and told almost nobody how many.
The full Antigua story: 1978 originals vs. the 2012 FSR
Its 2012 sibling: the FSR Antigua Precision Bass
Part of Fender’s rare color history, read the full story here.
Frequently asked questions about the 2012 Fender FSR Antigua Jazz Bass
Fender never published a figure. The widely quoted 300 applies to the FSR Antigua Precision Bass only. A number of 250 appears in used listings for the Jazz, but it traces back to seller descriptions rather than any Fender source, so treat it as folklore rather than fact.
No. The Jazz has a 7.25″ (184.1 mm) fingerboard radius, medium jumbo frets and a 1.5″ (38.1 mm) nut, against the Precision’s 9.5″ radius, vintage-style frets and 1.625″ nut. Body wood, neck wood, bridge and nut material match, but the necks are not the same instrument.
Look for an MX12 serial prefix, which marks a 2012 build at Fender’s Ensenada plant in Mexico, and the model number 014-0053-350. It should carry the matching Antigua-shaded pickguard, a maple fingerboard, chrome hardware and a vintage-style four-saddle bridge, plus the oval “Fender Special Edition” star decal on the back of the headstock that the Antigua Precision also wears. They shipped from mid-2012 into 2013.
