Hello my OSG friends,
It's been a long time since I posted anything here. Between Photobucket deleting everyone's photos, moving multiple times and Covid it's been a quiet few years on the projects.
So, 8 or 9 years ago when I first joined the forum I tried my hand at building my very first guitar body:
This was intended to be a thin pancake Jazzmaster style guitar with a lipstick pickup and back painted pickguard. I got about this far with the project and then gave up because I made a rookie mistake and realized the body wasn't completely flat after I finished it. This stayed in the garage for a few years.
Fast forward a few years and while in Montreal I acquired an old Hy-lo guitar project for $50 on craigslist. The pictures below are just as a reference to what style of guitar it was:
The guitar was the one pickup version (missing the pickup), the tailpiece was screwed in with stripped hardware store screws and the body was plywood and a bit cracked and split. I figured I could use the parts at some point for another project. I then realized I had the pancake Jazzmaster body kicking about and I could use that.
Also, in this time I managed to get my hands on a thickness plainer. The original white paint job was already wrecked from the extreme hot and cold of the Canadian weather so I figured it was worth trying to fix my mistakes.
The thickness plainer was a bit too narrow for a Jazzmaster body so I reworked the shape. I believe I drew around a Strat on the lower part of the body. I then rerouted the cavity and the neck pocket. Then, I refinished it in a metallic root beer brown colour:
(Sorry for the lack of photos and all the fingerprints on that last one, I didn't take that many through my progress.)
I also cut the Hy-lo metal pickguard to make it more like a control plate. For the actual pickguard I bought a pearloid Jazzmaster pickguard with no pickup bridge or control routs for $17 on eBay. I then reshaped the area around the neck and where the control plate would be with a coping saw.
As the project was using old parts I bought a low rider gold foil off reverb to go with the overall vibe. I also had an old OEM Jazzmaster tailpiece that I made into a hardtail. Below is the almost finished project:
Overall I am very happy with this fun little guitar. I can't believe it took me so long to finish!
A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
- joeld
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- CROSS_guitars
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Re: A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
Looks cool!
I'm pretty keen on Metallic brown.
I'm pretty keen on Metallic brown.
- Deed_Poll
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Re: A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
Looks great! I think you did well with the shapes and parts you had to work with, it's all judged very nicely and comes together as a whole. Sometimes these hacksaw modification jobs end up looking like a bit of a dog's dinner, particularly where Strats are involved (I was a little concerned when you mentioned the Strat outline!) but your approach has resulted in something that looks more like a "copy" catalog guitar from the '60s that has its own style, I think it's very successful!
Owner Operator of GuitarForm - Custom Offset Guitar Bodies
www.guitarform.com ◈ @guitar_form
www.guitarform.com ◈ @guitar_form
- countertext
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Re: A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
I love it... but do you just play it as a five-string?
- antisymmetric
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Re: A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
Cool, it has a slightly Coral Hornet vibe to it (to me at least). I like it!
Watching the corners turn corners
- joeld
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Re: A 10(ish) year long project aka Jagstang done wrong aka why did you do this to me?!
Haha! Well spotted. I actually just broke a string on my other guitar so I only had 5 strings to use!
I really wanted to make it look like an old teisco/60's Japanese guitar, because of the parts I was using- I like the fact a lot of those old guitars look like whoever built them needed to make the parts fit. From the original Hy-Lo guitar I used the neck & tuners, the bridge, the pickguard (modded) and the knobs.
With regards to the usage of the Strat- I actually did a mock up on my iPad a few times before I went ahead with the chop.
I thought this might be a bit of a wall hanger but so far it is a really fun guitar to play. The neck Has a non- adjustable truss rod and is like baseball bat.