The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

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Amon 7.L
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The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Thu Apr 05, 2012 12:06 pm

Hi to the whole OSG community!
Whilst this is my very first post, I'm a very looong-time lurker here and I've spent countless hours reading and being inspired by the great craftsmanship of many members which gave me that major GAS that each and every fellow guitar player has experienced at least once in his life.. therefore there ain’t nothing else to do, I’ll publicly admitted it, I’m addicted.
After a huge deep breath and a wallet check, I thought It was better to trust the Schwartz and say “f@#k it!”
I’ve bought a router, a drill press, some raps, files and a jigsaw and decide to take a stab at guitar building, I mean, life has a purpose, don’t you think?
Later on, I came out with my first guitar, the “jagmaster-stang”, a 25” hybrid, jaguar/jazzmaster/mustang and a particular body shape
Alright, being matter of fact that I’m already starting to rant, I’ll just spit out the reason why I’m here infesting the place..: my second complete built.
Behold!:
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Does it remind you of something? ;-)
Time to start the engines... ready? Let’s roll!
I went to the store and bought 2 18mm boards of laminate fir and one piece of 4mm plywood (purists don’t stick up your nose, it’s a prototype and I am on the steep learning curve), now it’s time to glue the sandwich together and trace the shape..
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After leaving the glue dry overnight, the blank was ready for the jigsaw rough cut outside the outline:
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Then, screwed the template of the “jagmaster-stang” (shape clearly recognizable now) on top..
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An odyssey with the customs gotten me stuck for a very long while, but when the dynamic vibrato and the control plate were finally in my mailbox I couldn’t resist.. let’s mock it up!
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Now…as your eyes may tell you, these parts are meant for a right-handed instrument, not big deal with the dynamic vibrato, I just had to simply flip the lipstick and use it as a string-thru, technique that both satisfies functionality and either aesthetic aspects, but what with the control plate?! Meh..
Using the plate upside-down chins down the shines and plus, I'd have to rectify the bevel of the mounting screws’ holes.. Suddenly, the main concept around this guitar was conceived blazed in my brain (and here I’ve pranced myself thinking “uhuh, the Schwartz is with me! ”): “This is THE Jaguar/Mustang hybrid nor a Mustang with a different body! Let’s make it Mustang-shaped & jaguar oriented!”.
Guys, you can vote which way looks best but keep in mind the guitar is already built -.-“
Any-ranting-way:
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Don’t you think it flows much better with the lower bout and with the upper horns? All in all, it works stunningly with the Jag..
Time to flush trim the baby:
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Rounded edges:
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Do you think it needs tort?
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Trying to align things up:
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more pics:
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Routing for the vibrato.. something pretty wrong happened with the left route so I had to dowel a hole. Being this a prototype done with fake “wood” I don’t care of the horror that lies beneath..
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Added arm contour, and all routes work, phew..
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Still wondering which way the plate ought to be..
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Damn control plate, left, right, up, down.. respect the KURDTZ’s sketch or personal preference..
These next two pics got me hypnotized while I was stuck zip-zapping back & forth from the one to the other.. gotten the fish tail fin effect.. ugh >.<
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Look test with a lefty 25” neck from a squier strat (still struggling with the control plate.. mustang way or jaguar’s)
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Routing the neck pocket:
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Test fit, neck fits nice and snug. It had to sit a little higher to compensate the height of a tom bridge thou.
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Pickups routing:
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Body front and back (added tummy contour, done with rasps and sand paper)
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Some self-explanatory pics, the neck pick-up is of my mustang’s bridge p.u, the bridge pick-up is a DiMarzio Super Distortion (Oh, yer, almost forgot to mention, at last, the control plate will be mounted not-flipped):
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Body has been majorly grain filled due to the utter softness of this fir, it’s so easy to shape but at the same time gets bumps even lying flat on the table. I have also sprayed several coats of nitro sanding sealer:
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Sprayed some grey primer (rattle can), first misty coat:
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Now a real drawback, most of the lefties are painfully bound to discover it at some stage..
If you’re drooling looking after some particular guitar, it prolly doesn’t exist in lefty version or either it will cost you an arm, a kidney and/or your momma too, no matter what. Plus, if you’re as lucky as me, you can even find a clerk at the biggest guitar store in your city that when you ask him for lefty jaguar he will go panic, starts crawling his eyes all over the place but you and then, all of a sudden, he will finally turn his glance at you and, while having in front of him a big, huge poster of the good’ old lefty mate Jimi Bloody Hendrix playing his mighty white strat upside down, he will go with fierce: “Well, I DON’T know (what a seller -.-“) if they do exist, thing is that being lefty is BASICLY WRONG.” The only thing I’ve managed to do was a grim sigh, shake my head in pity of him, twist my torso and point my finger at the holy master behind me and say “excuse me mate but, who’s that insane hippie guy up there who’s playing that guitar upside down?” Of course he didn’t answered.
Long story short, a 24” lefty neck replacement doesn’t exist (I know about Guitar Mill, Warmoth, etc,) at least not at the cheap price of the super quality right-handed version of the All Parts neck (my hands feel it waay better than the actual neck of my natural born left-handed Jaguar), even worse if you’re in Europe.
I HAD to get the All Parts right-handed neck, another plan that aesthetically wise goes fubar.
“THANKS FENDER” in behalf of the left-handed community!
Let’s move on..
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I’ve brushed the entire neck with Linseed oil, now the fretboard is very dark, awesomely dark..
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Wet sanded the primer to a smooth baby-silkness and tried a mock up… I totally hate the reverse headstock.. meh.. sigh
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I didn’t want to ruin the original pickguard of my Mustang, so I’ve decided to replace the Super Distortion with a Vanson hotrail single coil.. The finish you’re seeing is only the grey primer.. I was almost convinced to leave it that way…
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…. but who can resist to Daphne?!
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Daphne blue Jagstang next to my sonic blue Mustang ’69 RI…
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Almost done..
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Machine head set in place:
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Whole:
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Here it goes, The JAGSTANG:
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A bit of a photoshop touch the headstock just to see how it would have looked with the left handed headstock.. damn.. much bettah, don’t you think?
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Headstock decal (still needs clear coat)
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That’s all folks!
I want to dedicate this build as tribute to both Kurt D. Cobain and as a homage to all of you brothers of the entire OSG community out there for giving me the chance to learn how to build and make all of this possible and for teaching me one precious rule: “if you can dream it, you can build it” (or die trying!).
Last edited by Amon 7.L on Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:46 am, edited 7 times in total.

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andnowwhat
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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by andnowwhat » Thu Apr 05, 2012 12:13 pm

I love it! I am building one myself and yours looks perfect! just a suggestion, instead of the links could you post the images on the board?

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Amon 7.L
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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Thu Apr 05, 2012 12:25 pm

andnowwhat wrote:I love it! I am building one myself and yours looks perfect! just a suggestion, instead of the links could you post the images on the board?
Thanks! Mine is way far from perfect but I'm pretty satisfied of this prototype, I can't wait to see yours!
Regarding the pics.. problem is, how? Should I simply drag and drop the pics in the board in which I write? I tried that method but when I've clicked on the "preview" button, the image didn't appear, there was only another link..sorry..

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by DrOctagon » Thu Apr 05, 2012 12:25 pm

Looks great man, love the matching headstock.
If you want to post those links as images in the future, do the same thing just use the img tab instead of the url.
Pretty epic first post, too.
Welcome to the forum.

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by MattK » Thu Apr 05, 2012 2:30 pm

You got it just right. Fender's 90s designers should have the official Jag-stang abomination tattooed on their foreheads to walk in shame.

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Amon 7.L
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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Fri Apr 06, 2012 7:01 am

DrOctagon wrote:Looks great man, love the matching headstock.
If you want to post those links as images in the future, do the same thing just use the img tab instead of the url.
Pretty epic first post, too.
Welcome to the forum.
Thanks for the tip and the kind response, next time I'll post pics using the right tab, as for now it seems I can't edit my post to convert those links into images

MatthewK wrote:You got it just right. Fender's 90s designers should have the official Jag-stang abomination tattooed on their foreheads to walk in shame.
Thanks Matthewk! Honestly, I'm not 100% prone to think that Fender's designers should be in charge of all the blame about the official Jag-stang that has been commercialized.
Yes indeed, compared to the original sketch it's a complete aberration and they didn't wait a bloody sec before biting the bullet and make greedy profit out of a model still on prototype-level, but wasn't Kurt himself the one who also sent' em some cardboard tracings of what he wanted? I mean, I think his eyes might have catch the "subtle" difference among the two versions and he probably would have istantly tossed aside any shape not in his liking. Who knows..
Nonetheless, I do agree with you, the official one has something disturbing, a single -almost silly simple- thing Fender Custom Shop could have done with no effort would have been building two prototypes, one being faithful to the original sketch and one with the actual thingy and then see which would have been chosen..

Cheers

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by MelvinZ » Tue May 16, 2017 6:39 am

Hey Amon, I'm really in love with your design of the jag-stang and was wondering how you built the body? Do you sell templates or even better do you build guitar bodies? If so how much would you charge to build a jag-stang body? I'm asking this because the photos you posted are no longer working. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Tue May 16, 2017 1:23 pm

Thank you for your kind words, Melvin, I appreciate it :)

In order to see how I build the body I've replaced the broken links with actual pictures taken during the process, I do apologise for them being so blurry and not so detailed but I hope you get the idea. Nonetheless, feel free to ask any question, I'm more than glad to help where I can..

Unfortunally I'm not selling templates and nowadays I build extremely rarely and just as a hobby and I won't feel confident doing a job for a paying customer who definitely deserves a top notch product which atm I can't provide.

If you would like to try building it yourself I can only encourage you to. Especially if you have access to some powertools. It's very fun and not that hard if you have patience and take advantage of the extreme knowledge you find throught this forum.

The 24 inches jagstang is the second body I've build from the template you see in the OP, the first one was a body for what I've called "JAGMASTERSTANG" ( :fp: ) ..basically a long scale jazzmaster with jaguar pickups slanted as in a mustang:
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It sounded pretty good but I wasn't happy with the overall craftmanship (wood material, paint colour and such), therefore I dismantled the guitar and rebuild the body like other two times before turning into something I was happier with:
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Lots of trial and error but, my friend, I promise you.. you're gonna love creating your own things ;)

I hope I didn't come out like a douche with what I'm saying as it's not intented to sound like I'm leaving you at bay.. As I said, if you have any question I will be more than glad to help out as I'm sure lots of fellow would do as well.. :)

Cheers
Last edited by Amon 7.L on Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by morkov » Wed May 17, 2017 3:30 am

A very nice build.
Free to those that can afford it, very exspensive to those that can`t.

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Wed May 17, 2017 8:01 am

Thank you :)

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by kosta » Wed May 17, 2017 11:46 am

Nice one!! Looks great.

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Footbutt » Sat May 20, 2017 3:41 pm

dude, that looks stellar!
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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by s_mcsleazy » Sat May 20, 2017 10:37 pm

damn, i'm liking that shape/style. did you make the pickguard yerself? if so i gotta say good work.
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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Sun May 21, 2017 2:11 am

Thanks a lot, guys.. really :)
s_mcsleazy wrote:damn, i'm liking that shape/style. did you make the pickguard yerself? if so i gotta say good work.
The daphne blue Jagstang sports a standard mustang pickguard whilst the other two models have a custom pickguard I've designed and built myself.
For some reason, I think the shape of this variation of the Jagstang works best with the more jazzmaster-oriented layout than Mustang's, but seriously, aside from either mix, the body shapes and contour feel really comfortable.

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Re: The Jagstang done right...well, even thou lefty

Post by Amon 7.L » Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:53 am

Bump.
For those who were interested in this old thread, I've restored the pics photobucket neutered.

Cheers :)

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