Project idea questions - two piece Sazmaster (Jazzmaster/Saz) -

[Shadoweclipse13]

Epic idea! Definitely subscribed!

[mijmog]

double post

[mijmog]

I remember the bassist Jeff McElroy from the band Howlin Rain had a home made double necked bass that was basically two bodies cut in half with a giant hinge down the middle, he simply folded it into a softcase and locked the bodies together with some sort of door latch

[Shadoweclipse13]

That's brilliant!

[Rgand]

I can't say I'd have thought of folding it down the middle but that's a good solution for ease of carrying it.

[kick_the_reverb]

The fold down is a good option if you have two sturdy necks. In the case of the Saz neck, I think it needs some extra support and protection in travel.
That thing is like a broom stick...
Ran

[Shadoweclipse13]

The fold down is a good option if you have two sturdy necks. In the case of the Saz neck, I think it needs some extra support and protection in travel.
That thing is like a broom stick...
Ran

That's a good point, but if you made a custom case, that would be easily done. You could make a cushion insert that could sit between the 2 halves.

[kick_the_reverb]

One step forward:
I ordered a lightweight 1 piece Swamp Ash body from Guitar Mill omitting the rythm circuit route, tummy cut and forearm contour. In addition, I ordered a matching thickness body blank for the Saz part.

Jack from Guitar Mill has been awesome with providing advice to ensure this could work.


Will update when I get them (will take a little while).

For the JM pickups I will use AVRI62 take-offs.
For the Saz pickups I might go with the new Lollar Blademaster pickups.

Ran

[kick_the_reverb]

OK some updates on this project.
Back in summer of 2020 I realized the shop that I was planning to have the work done at, was just too swamped and has no ability to tackle a project like this within any acceptable time frame. I decided I will try a different route. In the meantime, I also thought about how to consolidate some instruments so I will have less to fuss with.

I wanted to test and see if it's feasible to combine an electric Saz with a couple of lower baritone strings on the same neck, in preparation for the future double-neck instrument build (lower part Jazzmaster, upper part BariSaz).

I wanted to find this out BEFORE committing to a final instrument build, and I didn't want it to be a too-expensive instrument.

I started collecting some parts, and asked if another local shop - Top Gear Guitar Pro Shop, can put it together for me. They said yes.


I supplied a loaded Squier Jazzmaster Baritone body, an unfinished 30" scale neck from Pitbull Guitars, a set of Lollar BladeMaster pickups, Duesenberg Guitars 12-string bridge, a 12-string stop tailpiece, a custom set of Pyramid strings, some tuners.
The neck was fitted to the body, the headstock was shaped and drilled for extra tuners, bushing & tuners were fit, the bridge & tailpiece were installed, pickups replaced, new nut installed and cut for the weird layout, and of course everything adjusted, some frets needed to be leveled, intonation was set.

Mike Boone (with some assistance from Dan Altilio Jr) at Top Gear did a great job of making it all fit together, and charged a very reasonable price.

After taking it home this Friday, I made a couple of changes - I added foam under the pickups to raise them, and I switched the overly heavy Saz plain strings to lighter ones I managed to make work. I will get a few other sizes from Pyramid, as I speced them to be be quite tight, and I realized it doesn't work for the quick hammer-on/pull-off trills the Saz requires.

Another point I realized (and should have realized in advance) is that the doubled string courses are much louder then single strings, so perhaps on the real instrument, a Fender XII style split pickup set would be better, as it will allow different pickup height adjustments.
I'll tell you what, though, those Lollar BladeMaster do sound very good, especially playing the baritone strings.

In the future I will try to add some temporary microtonal frets and test the instrument in rehearsals to figure out what works and what needs adjustments.

[epizootics]

Wow, that is beyond cool!
I was hoping you'd post an update on this as I am in the process of building an electric saz for my older brother.

Did you tune it to a standard baritone tuning?

If you're going down the microtonal route, I can send you the CAD file I made for a fretting template if you want:



This one is for a short-neck saz/baglama (27"), but I can adjust it to any scale length you want. The tricky part was getting reliable information on where to put the extra frets, as they are not exact quarter-tones in Turkish music. A Turkish-speaking member of TDPRI kindly directed me to an online calculator that worked but gave a slightly inaccurate reading of the Western 12 semitone scale, which I corrected within an an acceptable tolerance (the biggest adjustments were about 0.0034").

[kick_the_reverb]

Thanks! Very cool that you're building an electric Saz, would love to see details of the build.

This one is tuned (from heaviest to lightest):
A D Gg dd aa
The scale here is 30", and yes. I would love to receive the template, adjusted to 30". That's very generous of you.

BTW, the info I used for a different instrument (the microtonal Jazzmaster), was posted by a Turkish musician, the son of a Saz maker. Essentially he said that the instrument builders take a tuner, adjust it to 430 Hz, then put the microtonal fret to match the notes on the tuner.
It worked for me and it does put the microtonal frets where they would be on a Saz - not exactly in the physical middle, but slightly sharper (closer to the next higher semitone).

Ran

[s_mcsleazy]

the double necks posted at the start kinda reminds me of dengue fever's mastadong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5CYCvZNKJM

[kick_the_reverb]

the double necks posted at the start kinda reminds me of dengue fever's mastadong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5CYCvZNKJM

Mel Bergman (who I mentioned in the beginning of the thread) is the one who built the Mastadong. Mel was the first person I talked with about this idea, and he gave me a lot of excellent advice. I would have had him build it, but it was determined my budget was not compatible with what he needed to charge. Nevertheless, he said that he would help with any advice, and I appreciate that a lot.

Ran

[kick_the_reverb]

Today I tried using some leftover tang-less frets I had from the microtonal Jazzmaster project. They were vintage size (this neck came with larger frets). I used double sided tape, and was in the process of locating the 3rd one, when I realized the first microtonal fret was choking the middle string course. The third was not high enough, even after doubling up on the tape.
So, while they were quite useful to figure out where the permanent frets would go, they were not working well for the purpose of actually playing.
I am not going to use this out-of-production neck to learn how to add permanent frets, but I think I can work with the local shop to have it done by them (at a later date).

OH, in reference to the body by Guitar Mill for the actual double neck, I did get it a long time ago:



There's also a body blank with a matching thickness.
The idea was to remove the top part of the Jazzmaster body, then use the body blank for the BariSaz part.

Not sure if that's how it's going to be done in the end, but we'll see.

Ran

[kick_the_reverb]

Last weekend, I got to use the Baritone part of the BariSaz prototype in a couple of live shows. Here's a video from one:

https://youtu.be/5TAb4k103rI

Ran