Two Become One? My Oddballs

[Danley]

Narrating aloud my thought process on two odd-ball parts guitars I created:





The ‘Telecaster’ was created after someone cheated me out of a real Jazzmaster body, and I needed a cheap shell to throw the remaining parts in; it’s an MIM body that is at least five pieces with a laminate front and back, refinished in Duplicolor and badly (goodly?) checked. The neck is Mighty Mite and not bad. I’ve pirated the neck pickup out of the guitar at this point so it’s only got the Rose Picasso, the rest of the parts are the worst of all my remaining Jazzmaster spares. The craftsmanship on the bridge etc. is... Shoddy but functional. Shrunken bondo is in a starring role.

The Strat is an Eden body (paulownia) and the cheapest, $30 Chinese neck imaginable, with a huge heel and mediocre fretwork. So my thought is to adapt the Mighty Might neck to the Eden body, and re-assemble the Chinese neck to the Tele body and have it live a half-built life till I decide on some other plan for it.

But part of me is still nagging that I should keep the Telecaster as-is, continuing to work for its betterment (ex. redo the half-ass vibrato routing & plugs, maybe Seafoam, get new pickups etc.) OR I could buy a real Jazzmaster body for this and stick the old one in my closet until I feel like a freak again.

Putting this here for now while I deliberate before taking my next steps. Does this Telecaster deserve another chance?

[jthomas]

I like the gold metal flake.

[Jan Deal]

Get a Jazzmaster body and a new neck for the Strat!

[Rgand]

Make a good one out of the best parts, make another out of the worst parts. Sell the one you don't want or donate it to someone just learning to play. Then order up a new neck and body and start gathering parts to make your dream guitar.

[Danley]

I'll wrap this project up for now with the most minor of successes - I started my Mustang project (see other thread to understand why I'm distracted) without the need to sacrifice/cannibalize parts off the Jazz-masting Telecaster, as was my initial vision in-part. Spent a bit more to not only purchase the parts I planned to pirate, but also replace the parts already removed; so it again functions.

Used a neck pickup I had on-hand: Duncan SJAG-1 with a repaired wind. Ugly uncovered, but functional. Before I sealed it up I fixed the half-ass wiring as follows to get function from each switch position:

Pos. 1 / "Bridge" - Bridge HB full
Pos. 2 - Full HB + Jaguar Single
Pos. 3 - Jaguar Single only
Pos. 4 - Jaguar Single + Lower HB coil (hum-cancelling)
Pos. 5 / "Neck" - Bridge HB Split

Sorry, never remember which switch position is actually 'Pos. 1 ' vs. 'Pos. 5 ,' because I don't do 'arbitrary' well. One thought - the Rose humbucker really is among the lowest output pickups I've ever used; I used the Jaguar pickup in part because a standard Jazzmaster vintage output neck pickup would seriously out-pace it in terms of volume, so figured in theory I'd get better balance out of using a lower output Jaguar pickup. This is true - but only barely, and only with a significant height differential. Probably shouldn't have asked him to de-gauss the magnets as was suggested to me to better match 'true' WRHB tone.

That said, I plan not to expend much more effort on either of these, till I'm a decent way out from my Mustang proj. anyway - In a way, I'm sort of disappointed the guitar is *just* this side of playable to the point where I can't make a bit of space on my rack by cannibalizing/selling its parts. I tell myself I don't have room for imperfection of late, yet stuff like this sticks around If I do anything I may still just swap necks with the Strat - but if I do that, I'll be upset to lose the color match along with the matching wear: