Bridge on J mascis 1965 Jazzmaster?

[Lou Kash]

I have been doing a lot of research on J's first 1965 in an effort of building a tribute. I found recently that in 1998 J sold it to the MoPOP museum in Seattle. Looking at it I am a little confused by the bridge. In many interviews J claims it had a Gibson style bridge and Grover tuners. There on the guitar are the Grover tuners, but no Gibson bridge, Nashville, abr-1 or otherwise. Instead it looks like a mustang bridge? Or maybe a jazzster bridge with replaced saddles? I found a earlier picture from pre stickers and it appears to have the same bridge so if it was changed from the Gibson bridge it would of been pretty early. I will drop links to the two images. Does anyone have thoughts? is it just a regular jazzmaster bridge and I am wrong?

MoPOP J Mascis Jazzmaster picture can be expanded here

[GilmourD]

Actually, that looks like neither.

I think it's an Alembic Stars type bridge, like what apparently was used by Jerry Garcia.

[surfin_bird]

Looks like one of those brass Alembic bridges (the name was something with "stars" in it)
Garcia had that bridge on his Aligator strat.

[Highnumbers]

Yep, "Stars Guitars" bridge.

Very high quality machining, made of solid brass and super 70s/80s era mod to many guitars (along with the matching nut) I'm not surprised to see this on J's guitar considering he got it in the mid-80s.

[timtam]

I had to look that up ... Alembic Stars bridge ...

[Lou Kash]

Damn you guys are freaking awesome. I bet there are almost no people who know that's the actual bridge! I appreciate you all!

[OffYourFace]

Yes, J bought the guitar this way. He got used to it so he would put tuneomatic bridges on almost all of his Jazzmasters.

There's a guy who makes very high quality versions of these in different materials. He sells on eBay.
Mr Machinist

[Lou Kash]

Bit of an update / further question. I found this picture in the Rocket 88 book. Does anyone have any idea how J's Jazzmaster was modded to take the bridge?

[OffYourFace]

Bit of an update / further question. I found this picture in the Rocket 88 book. Does anyone have any idea how J's Jazzmaster was modded to take the bridge?

Well like i said above, he bought it this way. But IMO the only way to do it properly is to remove the thimbles, glue in wood dowels, and drill new holes for the bridge posts. I'm pretty certain that's how he did it with all his other JMs back in the day but I really don't know.

[timtam]

Building tribute guitars can be fun. Robert Smith's jazzmaster with the woolworths pickup and the makeshift buzzstop. Cobain's jag with many mods. And now Mascis' JM. Wonderful monuments to the time when guitar techs had no frigging idea about how to set them up in the way Leo Fender designed them to work.

[GilmourD]

Building tribute guitars can be fun. Robert Smith's jazzmaster with the woolworths pickup and the makeshift buzzstop. Cobain's jag with many mods. And now Mascis' JM. Wonderful monuments to the time when guitar techs had no frigging idea about how to set them up in the way Leo Fender designed them to work.

LOL True... People freak out about the height of a properly set up offset bridge because it looks wrong but the laws of physics don't care about how something looks as long as it works.

That said... I need to find one of those Woolworth Top20 pickups... The wife is a tiny bit of a fan of The Cure...