Looking for advice on creating my own pickguard for a JM style guitar. And some other ideas.

[gibs]

Ordered a Thinline JM body from Saylor and can’t wait for it to come in. I ordered it so that the control cavities were omitted, allowing me to do my own pickguard shape. I’m wanting to make a sort of hybrid layout of jazzmaster, Jaguar, and electric xii. Basically wanting the strat style shape of the electric xii bass side of the guard (may have to take the f hole into account), then have the Jaguar switch plate (cobain style most likely), and then either the electric xii control plate or Jaguar control plate for the tone, volume, and output jack. (I know faction makes the xii, but the lack of responses from him make me Leary of ordering), so the Jaguar plate may have to do in its place, though a jazz bass control plate might work too, can’t decide.

So am i correct in thinking the best solution is to get some fairly clear paper of some sort, and shade in the bridge holes, f hole, pickup cavities, and neck pocket as best I can for reference points, then go about about laying out the plates and then tracing out my pickguard shape from there? That’s about the best idea I can come up with, then once I’m happy with it, I can transfer to MDF and route out my template as well as make my control cavity routes in the body

Does this sound like the best solution?

Bonus question, I got a really nice warmoth tele neck for free ninety-nine (I know, I’m either squaring off the neck pocket or rounding off the neck heel (got plenty of strat necks to use for reference so probably will round off the heel). Not sold on the telemaster appearance of the tele headstock. I do love starcaster headstocks and was thinking of pinning some pine to the bottom half and making a shape similar to that (the neck is wenge. So the contrast of pine and wenge should also look interesting, have a peace of would i traces out the headstock on, and just need to design the shape of from there then cut out) does this seem unattainable? I’d think glue and clamps would work fine, maybe dowel into the wenge and pine for better mating? Or should I just avoid? Not going to order another neck. The neck is the whole reason I’m building the guitar and finally had an excuse to do so.

I’ll be starting a dedicated thread on my progress once I get going.

Thoughts?

[bodhi]

So am i correct in thinking the best solution is to get some fairly clear paper of some sort, and shade in the bridge holes, f hole, pickup cavities, and neck pocket as best I can for reference points, then go about about laying out the plates and then tracing out my pickguard shape from there? That’s about the best idea I can come up with, then once I’m happy with it, I can transfer to MDF and route out my template as well as make my control cavity routes in the body

This is fundamentally a question of what kind of tools you have at your disposal. If I understand correctly the body has the bridge holes and pickup cavities in place already? If so, that's a good thing, since especially the bridge holes are critical to get the guitar to intonate properly.

In any case, if the parts are in standard JM positions, one idea might be to get a cheap plastic pickguard and use that as a starting poing for your own template. It should allow you to get the neck pocket as well as the bridge and pickup holes transferred to your final template from the start, and you can work on the other details with all of that in place. Similarly you could use a strat and jag pickguard for the other details, assuming your plates fit. A copying router bit is really good for getting crisp lines.

If you happen to have access to a laser cutter somewhere, you could perhaps cut out the pickguards from online designs yourself, or even do all the work digitally to start with.

I find paper itself to be good for quick planning, but somewhat problematic or tricky to work with if you want 100% precision. What I've done in the past is go to a poster printer store and print out guitar shapes on A2 or A3 paper, and then just use paper glue to glue those to MDF or (preferably) 3-4mm plywood. Then you need to shape the template, but if you do a good job with all the aforementioned the end result is good. A laser cutter is just a lot easier and quicker to work with, and you can immediately cut out extra copies of your templates to experiment with.

It's also quite possible to draw directly on the body and let your eyes do the design as you go. You can then try to sneak up your template to these lines. If the body is finished, you can put some relatively low-tack tape on top and draw on that instead, which should work more or less the same.

In any case, you should probably be prepared to need to iterate and re-work some things as you go, so keeping that in mind when making cuts and copies should hopefully avoid too much frustration.

Bonus question, I got a really nice warmoth tele neck for free ninety-nine (I know, I’m either squaring off the neck pocket or rounding off the neck heel (got plenty of strat necks to use for reference so probably will round off the heel). Not sold on the telemaster appearance of the tele headstock. I do love starcaster headstocks and was thinking of pinning some pine to the bottom half and making a shape similar to that (the neck is wenge. So the contrast of pine and wenge should also look interesting, have a peace of would i traces out the headstock on, and just need to design the shape of from there then cut out) does this seem unattainable? I’d think glue and clamps would work fine, maybe dowel into the wenge and pine for better mating? Or should I just avoid? Not going to order another neck. The neck is the whole reason I’m building the guitar and finally had an excuse to do so.

This is also kind of a question of what kind of tools you have available. I'd say that gluing a (flat) piece of other wood to the back of your existing neck will not turn out to look anything other than DIY, no matter what shape you can make the outline. With that in mind, the problem transforms into figuring out how to make the headstock front planes close enough to each other to look like it's actually intended from the start. Two ideas present themselves at first thought:

• Route out or saw off the back of the headstock in such a way that you can establish the outline of the shape you want, and leave enough of the original headstock there to have a controlled step to the contrasting material. Maybe something like 4-6 mm, meaning you're going quite thin. Depending on where you want the outlines, you could also do something like removing only half of the back of the headstock lengthwise

• Establish an outline of the headstock on the contrasting piece of wood as close as you can, and just glue it to the edge (and maybe the back?).

The first option of the above is probably easier to do, but there's a more obvious risk of a mistake messing up the whole neck since you're probably working with thin materials at a critical section. The second option is safer in that regard, but might be trickier to pull off, and will probably leave some voids in the gluing that will need to be filled in no matter how close you can get the shape.

Oh, and I'd suggest staying away from pine. It's good for shaping and relatively easy to work with, but at least the local variant is really soft, so you'll have dings in no time. Wenge is also really hard, so it's a real contrast in that sense in needing to be careful in handling the guitar.

There is at least one if not more threads with someone doing something similar to this to achieve a larger headstock shape, but I think they were using maple for both pieces with a painted headstock, so they could just cut the headstock off and glue the piece in along a straight line. Can't remember the exact topic, and didn't come up in my initial search.

[Sweetfinger]

A source in the wild for clear plastic is a grocery store sheet cake container lid.

[ShortyMedlock]

Saylor will route the neck for any style neck...


If you go about a custom neck mod be sure the scale stays correct .

You will be pleased with your Saylor body...real quality. My Jag body came from him and the wood is so pretty I have not finished the project because I can't bear to cover the pretty grain!

The issue is I guess I really wanted to paint this guitar....

[gibs]

So am i correct in thinking the best solution is to get some fairly clear paper of some sort, and shade in the bridge holes, f hole, pickup cavities, and neck pocket as best I can for reference points, then go about about laying out the plates and then tracing out my pickguard shape from there? That’s about the best idea I can come up with, then once I’m happy with it, I can transfer to MDF and route out my template as well as make my control cavity routes in the body

This is fundamentally a question of what kind of tools you have at your disposal. If I understand correctly the body has the bridge holes and pickup cavities in place already? If so, that's a good thing, since especially the bridge holes are critical to get the guitar to intonate properly.

In any case, if the parts are in standard JM positions, one idea might be to get a cheap plastic pickguard and use that as a starting poing for your own template. It should allow you to get the neck pocket as well as the bridge and pickup holes transferred to your final template from the start, and you can work on the other details with all of that in place. Similarly you could use a strat and jag pickguard for the other details, assuming your plates fit. A copying router bit is really good for getting crisp lines.

If you happen to have access to a laser cutter somewhere, you could perhaps cut out the pickguards from online designs yourself, or even do all the work digitally to start with.

I find paper itself to be good for quick planning, but somewhat problematic or tricky to work with if you want 100% precision. What I've done in the past is go to a poster printer store and print out guitar shapes on A2 or A3 paper, and then just use paper glue to glue those to MDF or (preferably) 3-4mm plywood. Then you need to shape the template, but if you do a good job with all the aforementioned the end result is good. A laser cutter is just a lot easier and quicker to work with, and you can immediately cut out extra copies of your templates to experiment with.

It's also quite possible to draw directly on the body and let your eyes do the design as you go. You can then try to sneak up your template to these lines. If the body is finished, you can put some relatively low-tack tape on top and draw on that instead, which should work more or less the same.

In any case, you should probably be prepared to need to iterate and re-work some things as you go, so keeping that in mind when making cuts and copies should hopefully avoid too much frustration.

Bonus question, I got a really nice warmoth tele neck for free ninety-nine (I know, I’m either squaring off the neck pocket or rounding off the neck heel (got plenty of strat necks to use for reference so probably will round off the heel). Not sold on the telemaster appearance of the tele headstock. I do love starcaster headstocks and was thinking of pinning some pine to the bottom half and making a shape similar to that (the neck is wenge. So the contrast of pine and wenge should also look interesting, have a peace of would i traces out the headstock on, and just need to design the shape of from there then cut out) does this seem unattainable? I’d think glue and clamps would work fine, maybe dowel into the wenge and pine for better mating? Or should I just avoid? Not going to order another neck. The neck is the whole reason I’m building the guitar and finally had an excuse to do so.

This is also kind of a question of what kind of tools you have available. I'd say that gluing a (flat) piece of other wood to the back of your existing neck will not turn out to look anything other than DIY, no matter what shape you can make the outline. With that in mind, the problem transforms into figuring out how to make the headstock front planes close enough to each other to look like it's actually intended from the start. Two ideas present themselves at first thought:

• Route out or saw off the back of the headstock in such a way that you can establish the outline of the shape you want, and leave enough of the original headstock there to have a controlled step to the contrasting material. Maybe something like 4-6 mm, meaning you're going quite thin. Depending on where you want the outlines, you could also do something like removing only half of the back of the headstock lengthwise

• Establish an outline of the headstock on the contrasting piece of wood as close as you can, and just glue it to the edge (and maybe the back?).

The first option of the above is probably easier to do, but there's a more obvious risk of a mistake messing up the whole neck since you're probably working with thin materials at a critical section. The second option is safer in that regard, but might be trickier to pull off, and will probably leave some voids in the gluing that will need to be filled in no matter how close you can get the shape.

Oh, and I'd suggest staying away from pine. It's good for shaping and relatively easy to work with, but at least the local variant is really soft, so you'll have dings in no time. Wenge is also really hard, so it's a real contrast in that sense in needing to be careful in handling the guitar.

There is at least one if not more threads with someone doing something similar to this to achieve a larger headstock shape, but I think they were using maple for both pieces with a painted headstock, so they could just cut the headstock off and glue the piece in along a straight line. Can't remember the exact topic, and didn't come up in my initial search.

I’ve got a cordless router, as well as access to a table band saw, and table router, even a planer/belt sander combo (not a thickness planer, this is more for flattening out boards for trim use).

Body is just omitting the control routes, neck pocket bridge and pickups are all already present. Plan on p90 sized pickups, but knew the jm routes wouldn’t hurt that, plus future proofed that way. Unfinished. So, I may just try tracing out the shape on the body in pencil to start. The clear acrylic is sounding like the best way to then transfer over to a template. I do have a free strat guard to use as a template for the bass side, and I could find a cheap jag guard maybe for the treble side, that could make it easier to line up the plates, though the scale length difference may negate that advantage for the lead control plate. I think I like the jm control locations better since they’re actually closer at hand than a jag, so maybe I can push that closer in and see how that looks/works. The F hole is really the biggest question at this point, but the body will be here Monday, so I guess I’ll find out then.

Neck I’m not sure what to do with, I’ll have to do some more thinking on that, there’s a pretty pronounced sculpt that goes halfway up on the treble side of the headstock, so it takes a lot of real estate that I’d need to glue to.

[MayTheFuzzBeWithYou]

Hey Gibs!
Nice! Looking forward to see your project!
I was almost buying a Thinline Jaguar Body from Saylor… but shipping and customs to Europe would have be insane.

For the f-hole: this won‘t be an issue. The placement is just right. Either guard won‘t mess with it.

Please be aware, that you will need to add some wood if you want to mount a Jag‘s diamond plate to a Jazzmaster (except if it‘s already routed that way of course).

Have a look at the Ventures‘ JM - maybe you can find a template online.



And you maybe also have a look on this one:



I even tried the guard on a Jag body recently. Does look great with vibrato and offset bridge too!

It‘s a Telemaster, but if you enlarge the bridge area of the guard a bit it would look great. I think I still have the dxf files (or a pdf if you prefer).

[gibs]

Hey Gibs!
Nice! Looking forward to see your project!
I was almost buying a Thinline Jaguar Body from Saylor… but shipping and customs to Europe would have be insane.

For the f-hole: this won‘t be an issue. The placement is just right. Either guard won‘t mess with it.

Please be aware, that you will need to add some wood if you want to mount a Jag‘s diamond plate to a Jazzmaster (except if it‘s already routed that way of course).

Have a look at the Ventures‘ JM - maybe you can find a template online.



And you maybe also have a look on this one:



I even tried the guard on a Jag body recently. Does look great with vibrato and offset bridge too!

It‘s a Telemaster, but if you enlarge the bridge area of the guard a bit it would look great. I think I still have the dxf files (or a pdf if you prefer).

Awesome man.

I have seen the ventures template from faction, but he doesn’t communicate with any emails sent to him lately, and I’d just need the guard since the body is already done.

Yea. I figured that I’d need some wood for the jag switch plate, that’s why I omitted both rhythm and lead cavities, plus allows me some more freedom in my layout.

[gibs]

She’s here:







I think I’m gonna do as suggested and trace the out the pickguard layout as soon as I get my plates in, then copy onto some acrylic to cut my template from and transfer over to mdf. It’s all coming together. Now to decide if I’m doing those staple top p90s or if I’m gonna try making humbuckers out of 4 jag pickups.