"Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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bodhi
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"Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 10, 2021 10:49 am

By now I've been browsing this forum for a good while already, and have my eyes set on building some JM and other offset permutations once I get around to everything, but with lockdown and everything the last year or so a lot of different projects have stalled. Or never really got off the ground because I'm still hoarding parts or trying to finalize ideas...

But this thing is coming together now, I'm looking to prep for finishing this weekend and hopefully spray stuff next week! :w00t:

The story starts way back in September last year, when forum member s_mcsleazy posted a pic of an acrylic Jag-style guitar, which turned out to be an Aria Legend guitar viewtopic.php?f=8&p=1637620#p1637620 . The body shape is also a bit smaller than the normal Jag, and there's something about how the dimensions of that work out that really appeal to me.

So maybe I need a Jag. As luck would have it, a few weeks later in August, someone from Scotland on Ebay was selling the Creamery's versions of Johnny Marr's signature Jaguar pickups, and I bought the neck pickup. At the time, I was thinking about maybe using a humbucker in the bridge, so didn't get the set... It seems that bids weren't forthcoming, so the seller contacted me a few weeks later with a decent offer to get the bridge pickup as well, so I ended up with both anyways.

Not wanting to let go of the humbucker idea, without too much of a clear idea what to do with it, in October I bought a strat bridge pickup from Q pickups. Don't think I really had thought the purchase through, but it was around 50€ shipped, so thought I could flip it if I didn't find a use for it. But dual single-coils beside each other make a humbucker-ish, so thought I'd try that instead. But at this point it was clear I needed to do some less conventional wiring...

Without any other parts, along came December, and two significant things happened;

ThePearDream was kind enough to start a thread about making custom guitar templates: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=118067 , and I managed to buy a few long planks of alder at a good price for future builds. Now we were cooking...

I had been hunting for jaguar necks on ebay, but actually whiffed on at least one Jag and a few other decently priced ones last fall, but finally around February someone locally was selling a bullet Mustang neck for all of 50€, which I picked up quickly! So don't need to learn how to build necks just yet... :whistle:

Made a few orders of some more missing pieces, and back in March it felt like we're off!
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 10, 2021 11:07 am

Reading the thread for creating your own templates, I realised some of it might not be as difficult as I originally imagined, especially working from pre-existing vector files...

From the templates at https://www.electricherald.com/guitar-templates/ I extracted a single page of the JM/Jag pdf and imported that into Inkscape. It seems like each of the lines in the imported PDF document page is a separate shape, so you can select them individually and modify at will. After a bit of noodling, I had resized the outline to 96% of the original, and moved it over a bit so there was an intersection of the original size and the smaller one close to the neck pocket:

Image

All the other controls and everything are at the same place, only I also selected the strap button screw indicators when resizing the outline, so they're in the expected place... The resize does shrink down the total width and length a bit to something that is closer to what I was aiming for, and perhaps more proportionate to the Jag neck?

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Then, midway through March I spent a few hours in the workshop prepping a few offcuts of the planks I bought a few months earlier, and with an overnight glue job I was ready to get to work:

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After extracting the Jag from the PDF, I again exported that back into an image file, and in turn proceeded to run it through an online posterizor http://posterizer.online/rasterbator/ , creating a printable multi-page PDF where all the pages overlap a bit so you can line everything up.

Really struggled with this, but it works decently as long as you remember to check your dimensions when exporting and importing, as well as make sure that you're not zooming when printing the final picture. ;) Took me like three tries, but managed it on the home printer, but as we'll see this has a few consequences...
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 10, 2021 11:52 am

The next day, having flattened my glued planks and squaring off everything, I was extra happy that the template was downsized a bit. It turned out that even though I felt that I had a decent amount of playroom, once the raw plank sides were squared down it was less than 1 cm at the widest section of the body left to work with. Which means that an original size Jag/JM would not have fit and I'd be forced to do some further gluing to make it wide enough... But good to go:

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I ended up using two countersunk screws to affix the template to the glued planks, and that worked really well. As you'll see, I also drilled out screwholes in the original template, thinking that it'd be a good idea and save me a lot of measuring later on...

Drilled out some further holes and made some initial outlines for where the hole for switch plate would be. Then rounded over the sides and started the first counter-sinking of this project, the volume and tone pots.

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I think I got mixed up with the size differences between the bridge posts and trem posts, so at this point the Les Trem post holes are drilled out too much. As you can tell, we're using the Wilkinson roller bridge and at this point it's a Les Trem tremolo. I also picked up a Marr style Jag switch plate and sourced a four-way toggle switch :)

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I'm not sure if you've noticed, but along with the drill holes for the tremolo posts, I've also already made two more fundamental mistakes, though arguably they're more aesthetic than really functional... :)

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One of the more irritating issues with pre-drilling the screw holes from the template is that I didn't realise that it might not be completely reliable to do it without measuring, but more seriously the printed papers that I had glued to the MDF aren't 100% aligned... So what ended up happening was that the drill hole for the upper bridge post was off by about 1mm. Which I couldn't tell once I had already drilled through the template into the body blank with a 2mm drill bit, and then widened that again with a 12mm bit to have the post bushing fit...

If you think about it a bit, you might be able to spot the upcoming issue I have with the parts that I had selected for this project...

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Also had some small tearouts with the roundover bit, but nothing too serious. The upper horn one was a knothole really close to where the strap button is.

On the guitar I intended to use a toggle button for the upper horn switch, and had drilled a small hole close to the slide switch location already on the template, but as it happens I picked up a TvL JM pickguard locally for a good price just a few weeks before. I thought it might be a good idea to use that as a location indicator instead of what I had going on, but was surprised to find that it's even a bit closer to the neck pickup than the slide switch itself is.

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With the pickguard in place, the location of the toggle switch looks just fine to me, so without thinking about it all that much more I feel settled about where to place the toggle:

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At the time, I was more preoccupied with one of the aesthetic mistakes that I mentioned above; Where to place the switch plate. If you look at my modified template, I had left it in the original place for the larger Jag body shape, but I really don't feel that it fits particularly well after trying out a plate there...

So I put down a piece of paper to cover up the holes and slid the plate around a bit to try to find the spot for it:

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Before ending the day I also drilled through the body for the upper toggle switch, and then used two different sizes of circular saw bits to cut out a cavity for the switch that I'm about to use a LP plastic cover for.

Image
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 10, 2021 12:20 pm

And so begins the first round of fixes for this project...

I plugged the bad post drill holes as well as the lower switch cavity corners, and used a tiny bit to glue in the chipped knot hole from the roundover routing. Looking at the picture, you can also make out the new screw holes for the switch plate on the lower bout, which were moved over maybe 4-6 mm towards the neck pocket or so... Not that much, but enough to need some plugs for the holes.

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The upper horn fix was a bit funny ;)

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Having sanded down the plugs I can get back to placing the drill holes by measurement this time around, which is a lot more accurate :) It's fairly subtle in the pictures, but you can perhaps make out that I adjusted the curve on the lower edge of the wide part of the body a bit. Since the resized template accentuates the sharpness of the curves a bit, I felt that the "south-west" edge was too pointy. Toning that down a bit (less than a cm at the wides section of what I removed) brought back the feel of original shape more.

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I managed to make a good neck pocket template and route out a surprisingly nice neck pocket...

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... only I must have been sleeping and probably measured wrong with the upper edge roundover or something, so the neck pocket is about 3 mm too deep :squint:

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Still works just fine, but more stuff to fix...

By this point in time it's the 20th of March or so, and I drilled new holes for the bridge and tremolo posts, took everything home and strung it up to play. Almost immediately noticed some problems I'll return to in the next post. Aaand also all of a sudden there was a 6 weeks wait for some critical parts I had ordered weeks earlier, that I didn't want to continue building without...

Well, the parts finally arrived about a week ago, and I spent a long day in the workshop two days ago getting it closer to complete, but let's continue that tomorrow. :)

In the meantime, looking around for ways to incorporate the "humbucker" and single coil in a Jag body shape, I had been thinking about using mustang switches to get something like the original Jag / Marr switching as well as incorporating the extra pickup. Finally searching with the right keywords brought up the Squier Jarman signature guitar, which is probably the clostest production guitar to what this seems to be ending up like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squier_Ry ... ure_Guitar ... But I had never heard about it before ;D
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by jvin248 » Mon May 10, 2021 12:36 pm

.

Since you are building an HS but using two single coils for the H ... Like a robbie robertson Strat or the recently released Squier HS ...

Go with an Armstrong Blender ... SSS or in your case SS - S ... blends from SS-S to HSH. I do this wiring scheme on all my Strats. Gives me the classic Strat tones but also a stealth Les Paul/Super Strat. You may need or want to get a stacked/concentric pot to control tone and blender functions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKA_Q6MmdZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWF1L7GBYfU

.

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 10, 2021 9:24 pm

jvin248 wrote:
Mon May 10, 2021 12:36 pm
.

Since you are building an HS but using two single coils for the H ... Like a robbie robertson Strat or the recently released Squier HS ...

Go with an Armstrong Blender ... SSS or in your case SS - S ... blends from SS-S to HSH. I do this wiring scheme on all my Strats. Gives me the classic Strat tones but also a stealth Les Paul/Super Strat. You may need or want to get a stacked/concentric pot to control tone and blender functions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKA_Q6MmdZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWF1L7GBYfU

.
Thanks for the tip! Certainly hadn't thought about that idea, and it's nothing I've ever tried... I don't think I'd be able to fit standard roller knobs with the control layout I have cooking with mustang slide switches, at least easily... I'm going to be using concentric knobs already and at first thought don't feel like adding another pot. Maybe one of those jazzbox under-the-pickguard stealth pots might fit in somewhere.

Do you use the in-between blend settings? When I've looked at the Dan Armstrong blender I've felt a bit concerned about how the blend changes the sound a lot when you use the main pickup selector switch, but never really tried it... Do you get used to it easily?
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Tue May 11, 2021 10:57 am

And we're back. The "competition" is over, so if you guessed that the issue with the tremolo is be "lack of downward force because of the height of the Les trem in comparison to the bridge", you're completely correct!

More precisely, I don't think it's necessarily some inherent design flaw with the Les trem or the bridge, but I had mounted the Les trem too far back to cause issues:

Image

The picture is a "re-enactment" I just took a few moments ago, since apparently I didn't snap any pictures of the guitar in the approximate six week period when I had it strung up and playing at home. The low E string is obviously not strung to tension here as you can see it bend, but even with the bridge pretty high up the strings on the Les trem line up about at the same height. Which causes a lot of buzzing.

My neck pocket route was also about routed a bit over 16 mm instead of the Mustang standard 15mm by mistake, so I had to use the 1.5 degree StewMac shim to get the combo anywhere close to playable. The shim also adds a bit less than 2mm of overall height to the neck system, so without further mods I had no hope of getting the string action acceptably low.

I guess that's one of the core issues you might face with using a TOM style bridge, they're not usually as low profile as the Fender stuff because of the inherent neck angles on Gibson guitars. The Les Trem is also probably not problematic by itself if you have it mounted a bit closer to the bridge than I had. My thinking was that I wanted to emulate the look and feel of the original Fender style trem, so I aligned the trem bar mounting location with where the collet is on the Jag trem along the length of the body. Just doesn't work, needs to be a bit closer to the bridge...

Luckily I had a leftover buzzstop from a trade years ago in my parts box, so I could just install that and get the downward pressure I wanted at the bridge...

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After all the parts had arrived, this is what the body looked like heading back to the workshop a few days ago. I had started to use a forstner bit to drill out the initial hole under the switch plate, but stopped half way through, as I wanted to use a LP style selector cover there as well. It's an easy part to source, and I had figured out that the hole needed should fit under the cover.

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On the back, as I had drilled through the center of the the volume and tone knobs, I could use those holes for alignment to draw indicator lines for both a back-mounted control cavity and a side-mounted output jack.

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And this is what my DIY template looks like. You can see the issues with alignment of indvidual paper pieces... If I'll end up using this particular approach in the future, putting the whole centerline on as few papers as possible feels like a safer approach for getting alignment right... But really you can figure out most stuff easily enough by measuring directly from the template instead of using it as a drill template at the same time.
Last edited by bodhi on Tue May 11, 2021 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Tue May 11, 2021 11:21 am

As the replacement trem, I decided to use the Goeldo DG "Shorty" one: https://www.goeldo.de/en/guitar-parts/t ... rty-design

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For one, it seemed solid in construction like their Les Trem, it's lower profile to provide better downward pressure, it doesn't look like a version of the traditional Jag tremolo (ie. more visually distinct), and the price is pretty good at least here in the EU.

To mount it you need to drill a single hole for the tremolo spring in the body as well as screw down the base T-shaped bar, so it's easy in comparison to any Fender design. The spring hole should be about 33mm deep and 25mm wide, though the latter could easily be less.

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Again I aligned the location of the DG trem arm with the Fender trem collet, the exact offset for the spring hole is on the body in pencil if you're intersted enough :) The base plate is the metal thing in the upper left corner, the pointy bits are the pivot point for the moving part that the strings are attached to.

Not exactly sure why, but it seems that the trem could do with a few small improvements in the details to be the best it can. From what I can tell, the same basic design is reused in a few variations, but I believe all of them would end up having the same issues? :derp:

One of the issues is that the rotating trem arm mount is much thicker than the moving plate of the trem itself, so it's bound to make a dent in your guitar surface no matter what you do? At the same time, this will limit the range of motion, so it feels like an odd choice.

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Here's the trem from another angle, you can see how the screw edge goes over where the base plate is mounted and the spring and screw rig that maintains the counterweight to the strings.

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It's not a Floyd Rose, but really solid in feel and use. I'll come back to a few other details and reflections, but overall I'm actually very happy with the choice. :)
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Tue May 11, 2021 12:16 pm

Getting back to the actual woodworking, I set out to fix some of the problems I had created so far...

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I decided to drill out a small bit of wood for the trem arm mounting contraption so it wouldn't hit the body and allow me a bit of more range when pulling up on the trem arm. Of course, this was before ever playing the trem, but felt like the obivous thing to do ;)

To address the bridge height along with the neck angle, I decided to countersink the top of the bridge mounting posts, so the bottom edge of the bridge can basically be completely flat with the guitar top. That'll allow me the largest adjustment range I can get with this bridge, and doesn't look half bad. I tried using the drill press to align a 12mm drill bit in the existing hole before changing to a 15mm bit to drill out the countersinking, but that didn't work half as good as just eyeballing it. It's not enough to bother trying to fix, don't think it'll be noticeable once everything is finished.

Someone had very helpfully provided the dimensions and location of the typical belly cut in this thread here viewtopic.php?t=84529

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Even before starting, I had the feeling it wouldn't really work out. Comically, the cheapo compass that I had with me couldn't even stretch out to the 146mm radius indicated in the thread above, so I maxed out at 135mm. :D That's the line in the image, but I also drew another one at around 129mm which left enough space for the LP switch cover.

This is really one the ways one of the fundamental problems I mentioned early in the thread can be seen. :( Working in the wrong order, I don't really have an easy way of going back to f.e. drill a smaller hole, since I went ahead with the location based on the JM pickguard before drawing out where the belly cut would be. There's another upcoming reason for this, since I wasn't at all sure that I could manage a deep enough belly cut in the first place, but going back and forth checking stuff once again proves to be a good idea...

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On the front, it was time to do something about the pickup cavities. I had bought a 24mm forstner bit after measuring that that'd be the appropriate width around the Jag pickup (it was that or 23mm, but the slightly larger one was easier to find and a bit cheaper). Again I had to adjust for the misalignment of the template a bit, and then calculate the correct spacing. Just writing notes on the body feels like an easy way to work, as it'll all get covered up or sanded away later anyways.

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With the initial holes for the typical Jag pickups drilled, it was time to figure out where to place the extra pickup... And then manage the routing needed for the more triangular shape of a strat pickup.

With that sorted, I connected the forstner bit holes with a router, using double sided take and a quick jig from a few pieces of straight leftover wood.

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Happily this all seemed to work out well. :) The only issues were that the router bit cut out a small section under the surface of the guitar at the middle end end of the strat triangle as I was freehanding the wide angle location. The routes that connect the outside edges of the forstner-drilled cavities aren't completely straight, but that probably just needs a minute with a file to sort out visually.

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I haven't mentioned it yet, but this guitar isn't going to have a pickguard, so all the control cavities are going to be back mounted, if it wasn't already apparent.

One of the critical pieces I wanted to have in hand before continuing the build were two telecaster control plates without holes, so I could use them as the cavity covers for the volume and tone knobs as well as the Mustang switches.

To make those work properly, again countersunk, I used the drill press with a circular saw bit for the outside edges, and then proceeded to remove most of the material from the pot cavity. The bottom cavity was routed, but I ended up using a chisel for the upper one, as I don't yet know the exact dimensions of the mustang switch cavities. To indicate where they should be I had drilled a 6mm hole where I thought the middle section of each mustang switch should be.

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I had also used a rasp and some files to open up the pickup selector cavity. None of the work on the back was particularly neat, but at that point had been working close to 7 hours straight and was getting a bit fed up with everything. The control cavity edges should be easy enough to clean up though, at least.

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Along the way I improved the arm carve and the belly cut a bit, but both can do with some more work. Again the upper toggle switch hole kind of messes with the flow of the lines, though of course it's better than with a flat body.

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All in all, this is basically what the front of the body looks like today. Definitely need to to plug the holes for the buzzstop and the Les trem adventure, but other things are kind of up for debate...
Last edited by bodhi on Tue May 11, 2021 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Tue May 11, 2021 12:44 pm

And so, this is what this project looks like today with all the possible pieces mounted in place: :w00t:

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As mentioned I have a straight Jag switch plate, this one from https://www.eyguitarmusic.com/ . The four way selector switch is sourced locally, but should be an Oak Grigsby one, I believe. Really solid feeling.

The blade switch knob is from Armadillo Guitar, and is milled from aluminum https://www.armadilloguitar.com/

For the pot knobs, I'm using a stacked set from Sandberg that is made for basses, along with concentric audio taper 1M pots from a online store in the Neatherlands. Together with the upper horn toggle switch, this will allow me to get two distinct sounds from the controls even without the typical roller knobs :w00t:

My thinking is that I should have the typical Jag sounds available with these controls, and then can use the mustang switches to toggle in the third pickup, as well as one of the Marr wirings maybe? Dunno, haven't really figured out what to use precisely yet, as it's my first go with Jag pickups, a 24" scale length, and the extra pickup curveball...

On Thursday a few days from now it's a public holiday locally, so I'll go back to the workshop to deal with the obvious issues. I'm also going to be using threaded inserts for mounting the pickups, so I probably need to create a small template to get the drill holes to line up precisely, before putting any of those in place...

There's a bit of a remaining dilemma though, in that since I've been building this body in the "wrong order" so far regarding a lot of the details, I feel that the placement of the switches that at the time looked pretty good is starting to bother me...

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The upper horn toggle switch should probably be a bit closer to the original hole from the template instead of the location I got from the JM pickguard... The pickup selector switch plate should probably be a bit closer to the "horn" in the lower bout to look like it really belongs... The mustang switches maybe need to be a bit more centered, and I feel they might be ever so slightly out of line if I look really closely, though it's maybe more of a visual thing because of very slight (< 1mm) alignment issues with the pickup cavities (funny enough, that's only on the upper side, the lower edges are completely in line with each other for whatever reason :) )

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And on the back you can see what the plates and covers look like for the time being. happy enough about the tele plate placement, but also from this side the LP plates look a bit awkward, even disregarding the belly carve location... :fp:

I'll definitely get the pickups in place and everything else sorted before making a final decision on this, though.

More updates later in the week, let's see where we end up...
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Wed May 12, 2021 2:11 pm

Oh man!! ???
You think you can't, you wish you could, I know you can, I wish you would. Slip inside this house as you pass by.

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by blimpage » Sun May 16, 2021 4:47 am

I'm loving this build! I really dig how the scaled-down Jag body looks, I think you're into something. Can't wait to see more!

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by ejendres » Mon May 17, 2021 6:02 am

Really cool build man, I'm curious about how that bridge humbucker will sound. I've always wanted to do a dual single pickup in a build.

If I were you I'd leave the switches as is for now. I think the positioning looks good personally. Once you have the pickups installed you might find you like them were they are.

Whats the plan for finish?

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Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 17, 2021 1:12 pm

Back in the workshop a couple of days ago, I quickly doweled the extra holes, and also opted to plug the original drill holes for the mustang switches. They weren't really sitting in the right place, and I think it'll end up looking a bit better with spacing from the pickups more like the Mustang than the 7-8mm I had going on, and it'll allow me more flexibility with lateral placement as well.

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I also tried increasing the spacing of the countersunk bridge posts to 16 mm from the 15 mm I had earlier, as the lower post got stuck a bit at the lower section of its rotation, and I figured that that won't play well with the eventual finish. They were also not particularly centered, as I had countersunk these only after discovering issues with bridge height and the neck angle after putting them in place, but no improvement here, more the other way :fp:

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After that I used a cutout of a printed mustang template, my original neck pocket template and some paper glue to fasten a sliver of paper that's the same as what I had over-routed earlier.

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Some quick cutting and belt sanding later it was fitting fairly well, so proceeded to glue and clamp as well as possible.

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With those out of the way, I proceeded to make a drill template for the threaded inserts for the pickups out of some leftover ash...

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... which jammed in place fairly well.

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And then on to the drill press. Needed to move some of the neck pocket clamps to even have room to turn the drill press handle ;D

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Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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bodhi
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 453
Joined: Mon May 20, 2019 12:47 pm

Re: "Honey, I shrunk the Jag!", or the tale of the accidental Jarman

Post by bodhi » Mon May 17, 2021 1:18 pm

ejendres wrote:
Mon May 17, 2021 6:02 am
Really cool build man, I'm curious about how that bridge humbucker will sound. I've always wanted to do a dual single pickup in a build.
Yeah, not sure if they'll be all that different from a normal humbucker as the spacing is really close, but no idea how the individual pickups might work together (or not in this case)
ejendres wrote:
Mon May 17, 2021 6:02 am

If I were you I'd leave the switches as is for now. I think the positioning looks good personally. Once you have the pickups installed you might find you like them were they are.
It's actually one of the things, as I had all the parts fastened already and playing it, they felt a small bit out of place just where they were... Not sure if it might be all that noticeable with normal Jaguar switches, but with the blade swith the placement feels weird when either end is selected and the knob moves over to one side.
ejendres wrote:
Mon May 17, 2021 6:02 am
Whats the plan for finish?
Bought a rattle can metallic black, hopefully that works out... In the worst case it'll be something else fairly dark, as the way I imagine it that should balance with the shiny bits better without a pickguard?
Jazzmaster project (got a body, placeholder neck, some pickups and ideas)
Tokai Telecaster Thinline with Creamery Pickups Filtertron and Tapped Tele
Blake Mills-inspired Strat project w/ Gold Foil and slide pickup

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