Thinline Jazzmaster 390 build w/Bigsby

[bgalizio]

I have been enjoying my thinline triple humbucker Jazzmaster for about a year now and decided it was time to start another build. This time, I'm working on a thinline Jazzmaster with 3 P90's and Bigsby. The neck will be a maple Reverend guitars neck that I was fortunate enough to find - they are my favorite neck profile, and I work well with the 12" fretboard radius. The pickups are Reverend P90's - 1 neck and 2 bridge pickups - with Proto Guitars tortoiseshell pickup covers. I'll be doing individual on-off switches for each pickup, master volume control, traditional tone control, and bass cut tone control.

Cooterfinger was kind enough to work with my ideas to create the body. This is an alder body with alder top - typically not used for natural finishes, but I wanted something simple for my first Tru Oil finish. Here's the making of the body:

Boards:


Body roughed out with aged white pickguard:


Thinline cavities:


And with top:


Mockup of the unfinished body with pickguard and Bigsby:


For the Tru Oil finish, I applied 14 coats to each side with some light micro mesh sanding between coats. It looks fairly glossy at times, and the color really changes depending on the light. I had a good experience with this finish.




Here's the Proto Guitars tortoiseshell pickups covers:


Full body mockup (some white balance issues) with the banjo arm rest:


And without the banjo arm rest:


I'm hoping to start wiring this weekend.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Awwwww yeah Cool as hell!! And I LOVE those P-90 covers!!

[Drewbertca]

I, for one, actually like the look of alder. I'm strange though.....Looks good. love those covers.

[dinosaurkale->]

damn..this guitar is gonna be awesome !

[ifallalot]

This looks like you need to play some Spaghetti Western tunes

[2after909]

I love this.

[pad]

how lovely! love it!

[PixMix]

Those p90 covers are amazing. Good work all around!

[bgalizio]

Before getting laid up with the flu, I worked on some wiring with my dad.

Connecting the pickup selector switches:


Treble bleed capacitor on the volume. Using CTS pots and an orange drop capacitor on the tone control:


The bass cut pot is a reverse log 1M alpha pot with a silver mica capacitor:


All together waiting for the pickups:


Also wired up the output jack and the bridge ground:

[Con-Tiki!]

That is very pretty. Woodgrain is just right, tortoise covers are a great addition.

[bgalizio]

Finished up all the assembly today! First we wired up the pickups:




And the rest of the wiring:


Got the pickups mounted and the pickguard on. Checked that the pickup switches worked in the direction I wanted.


Got the neck and bridge on, strung up and we're done!








It plays and sounds great. Somehow we managed to have the standard tone wired backwards. I usually set that one and forget about it so I won't bother changing it until the next time I have the pickguard off. I got the set up generally done and will revisit after things settle. Still not sure about the arm rest - it looks nice without it but I'm not used to feeling wood on my arm at that spot! It's very quiet so I don't think I'll need to go back and add any shielding but time will tell.

[bgalizio]

I wanted a little more chime out of this guitar so I replaced the pickups with some Sunday Handwound Pickups. Tim was great to work with and got my sonic request down very well. We went with AlNiCo 2, 7.1, 7.3, 8k for the pickups. They sound fantastic!

I got the tone pot rewired while I was in there too which is nice.

[dinosaurkale->]

pickup covers are gorgeous. very cool build

[filthypit]

awesome - absolutely awesome!
good call on the pickup upgrade

[rexter]

Love this build, great work!

I always found P90s too muddy, sounds like the pickup swap was a good choice, nothing beats chime in my book!