My first Jazzmaster build

[djspecialist]

To shim or not to shim?



The ruler is about 10mm off the pickguard, in line with the bridge posts.

[bodhi]

Next: assembly. Should I try doing the nut slots myself (a friend has a set of files), or is that the point when I should hand over to a pro for the setup?

Depends on your patience level and available time vs pocket change for the cost of the new nut. It's not rocket surgery, and you can always start over, but it can be pretty frustrating to have to start over since you'll probably mess up a bit.

If you want to try yourself, get a few spare nut blanks in your preferred materials. There are fret spacing rulers that you can print out on the web, so when you find the locations of the outer strings you can use those to mark out where to cut the other holes. There's quite a bit of online guides for most steps, so I'd suggest looking at a few videos etc.

You probably need to cut down the nut blank a bit as they tend to be quite a bit taller than what's required (a string groove shouldn't be particularly deep from the surface of the nut), and that's a bit irritating to do with hand tools, and again you might overshoot. If you have access to some kind of sanding machine and can manage it without fingers or the nut blank going flying across the room it might be ok to do it with that.

Just remember that you want to ease into the right cut, so if in doubt remove less material and check. Over and over

[bodhi]

To shim or not to shim?



The ruler is about 10mm off the pickguard, in line with the bridge posts.

Depends a bit on your bridge, if you're doing the basic styles they have a bit of inherent height and need some breathing room to pivot over the thimbles. Doesn't look that bad...

I'd perhaps try to assemble it without and check how it feels... You can do a rough setup with strings without the nut if you use a capo on the first fret.

A shim will then in turn raise the neck heel and give a bit of more breathing room for adjustments, as well as affect different playing feels, so might be worth trying out either way to compare.

[Biloxide]

Seeing your picture, the side dots of your neck are near close of your pickguard... try to put angled shims starting from 0,5 and 1° to increase friction/pressure/break angle on your bridge set up elevating.
You can find flat mapple shims for strato and tele at guitar and woods in portugal they are very helpfull, with incorrect height of a neck pocket, like some builts i done with sometimes a crazy height out of specs 18,50-70mm cause by a cnc mistake. They are cheap price but the cost of expedition is strong, try to group others items, they have a lot's of furnitures and handy tools...

[DrippyReverbTremolo]

A shim seems to be in order. That bridge pickup looks loooow.

[djspecialist]

I probably screwed the bridge pickup too low.

I'll back it off a bit, then do a rough setup as suggested by @Bodhi and see what it looks like. Just need to fit the tremolo first ...

(And I've decided to have a tech fit the nut, so he can further tweak the setup then.)

[N0_Camping4U]

Who did the paint? looks incredible!

[djspecialist]

Who did the paint? looks incredible!

It was a company called Rexter, based in Norwich (UK) - but he's since shut up shop.

[GilmourD]

Who did the paint? looks incredible!

It was a company called Rexter, based in Norwich (UK) - but he's since shut up shop.

You mean this rexter?

[marqueemoon]

This is looking great so far.

I would start without a shim and see if you need one. I can’t imagine if taking much, and with a Staytrem you shouldn’t have to worry much about rattling and strings jumping out of the saddles.

A slightly overwound bridge pickup is a good call if you want consistency in all 3 positions in the lead circuit.

That balance is really important to me, and the higher the bridge is the harder it becomes to bring the bridge pickup close enough to the strings, and then you have to start dropping the neck pickup down to try to match, and you can run out of room there.

[ohm-men]

+ 1 on the shim.
For some reason newer Jm bodies have a deeper neck pocket.
The originals had only a 10mm deep neck pocket.

As for the shim, there are some good ones out there that are agled and fill the complete neck pocket instead of just a shim at the heel.
They are availble in different angles, and seam to work fine.

That body looks
Rexter sure knew how to

[djspecialist]

Who did the paint? looks incredible!

It was a company called Rexter, based in Norwich (UK) - but he's since shut up shop.

You mean this rexter?

That's the guy! Jon did a very nice job.

[djspecialist]

This is looking great so far.

I would start without a shim and see if you need one. I can’t imagine if taking much, and with a Staytrem you shouldn’t have to worry much about rattling and strings jumping out of the saddles.

A slightly overwound bridge pickup is a good call if you want consistency in all 3 positions in the lead circuit.

That balance is really important to me, and the higher the bridge is the harder it becomes to bring the bridge pickup close enough to the strings, and then you have to start dropping the neck pickup down to try to match, and you can run out of room there.

+ 1 on the shim.
For some reason newer Jm bodies have a deeper neck pocket.
The originals had only a 10mm deep neck pocket.

As for the shim, there are some good ones out there that are agled and fill the complete neck pocket instead of just a shim at the heel.
They are availble in different angles, and seam to work fine.

That body looks
Rexter sure knew how to

I've ordered a couple of StewMac shims - a 0.25 degree and a 0.5 degree. I figure those two should give me enough options.

The guitar is off to the tech tomorrow for the nut installation, so I'll take the shims along and see what he thinks.

I tried to raise the bridge pickup, but the pickup cover isn't pushing all the way up to the screw heads. I suspect I might have over-compressed the foam. I'll ask the tech to look at this too.

[djspecialist]

Separately, I'm having collet woes ...

[djspecialist]

Oh yes, and I realised that on the strangle switch, instead of a 0.0022uF cap I'd used a 0.02uF

Now fixed - at least this project is getting me plenty of (un)soldering practice.