I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Finished Pg 4

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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HNB
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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by HNB » Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:57 pm

Beautiful work!
Christopher
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Flurko
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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by Flurko » Thu Mar 25, 2021 1:46 am

This is nice !
I don't know precisely why but the natural wood and the layout gives off a strong G&L vibe, the more techy vibe of the descendant vibrato is a nice touch with this.

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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by Aleksandr_khru » Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:27 am

Please measure the distance from the inside edge of the neck pocket to the centers of the bridge mounting holes. Found several drawings, everywhere these dimensions are different. I don't know where the truth is)
And how thick is this body? The information about the thickness is also different from 41 to 46mm.
I also plan to build a jazzmaster in a natural finish.

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bodhi
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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by bodhi » Thu Mar 25, 2021 1:58 pm

Aleksandr_khru wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:27 am
Please measure the distance from the inside edge of the neck pocket to the centers of the bridge mounting holes. Found several drawings, everywhere these dimensions are different. I don't know where the truth is)
And how thick is this body? The information about the thickness is also different from 41 to 46mm.
I also plan to build a jazzmaster in a natural finish.
It's 181 mm. You can find accurate templates in pdf and sometimes other formats at f.e. https://www.electricherald.com/fender-j ... templates/ . You can print subsections of these at 100% at home to check different measurements if need be.

The body thickness doesn't really matter other than that it should be thick enough that the neck screws don't crack the surface of the fretboard. Fenders are in the 41-46 range, and the only place it really matters is when you have a strat type tremolo that needs enough depth for the tremolo blocks to move without the springs touching your body.
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: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by bodhi » Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:03 pm

d-rock wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:22 am

[...]

In the meantime, I have been looking at this thing and felt that the upper horn looked a little bare. I had ordered a inexpensive pickguard off Ebay from China for like $15 including shipping. It was for an MIJ body and this Saylor body is to US specs. I figured I'd try an experiment to see if I liked a different arrangement. I cut a hole in the upper horn for the 3-way toggle, found some white hole plugs on Amazon for the lower horn, and took the Dremel to the pickguard around the bridge posts. The pickguard and controls look more balanced and intentional to my eye, at least.

Image
This looks sharp, I like it!

I bought a used Troy van Leuwen pickguard recently, and was surprised to find that the location of the three way toggle switch isn't where the rhythm/lead slide switch is, rather a bit closer to the neck pickup. I'll try to grab an understandable picture of it and a reference pickguard, but they're not at home at the moment, if you'd like to compare notes with the Fender design department...
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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d-rock
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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by d-rock » Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:19 pm

bodhi wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:03 pm
d-rock wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:22 am

[...]

In the meantime, I have been looking at this thing and felt that the upper horn looked a little bare. I had ordered a inexpensive pickguard off Ebay from China for like $15 including shipping. It was for an MIJ body and this Saylor body is to US specs. I figured I'd try an experiment to see if I liked a different arrangement. I cut a hole in the upper horn for the 3-way toggle, found some white hole plugs on Amazon for the lower horn, and took the Dremel to the pickguard around the bridge posts. The pickguard and controls look more balanced and intentional to my eye, at least.

Image
This looks sharp, I like it!

I bought a used Troy van Leuwen pickguard recently, and was surprised to find that the location of the three way toggle switch isn't where the rhythm/lead slide switch is, rather a bit closer to the neck pickup. I'll try to grab an understandable picture of it and a reference pickguard, but they're not at home at the moment, if you'd like to compare notes with the Fender design department...
Thanks bodhi. I looked at a lot of photos of the Fano JM6 before I drilled for the new toggle switch. To me, the placement on those looks much better than the Fender JM Specials.

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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by Aleksandr_khru » Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:09 pm

bodhi wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 1:58 pm
It's 181 mm. You can find accurate templates in pdf and sometimes other formats at f.e. https://www.electricherald.com/fender-j ... templates/ . You can print subsections of these at 100% at home to check different measurements if need be.
From this site I downloaded the drawings, scaled them in the CAD, they are different.
Thanks for your measurements, I will compare with the pickguard that I have and with the drawings of the pickguards from the Internet.


UPD. I checked the drawings again, everywhere 181mm.
I was wrong. :fp:
Thanks again!

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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by d-rock » Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:08 am

Warmoth neck came in. Beautiful work...however I really didn't like the neck carve I chose. I went for the Boatneck which they describe as a soft V. Essentially the Fatback profile with some of the shoulders shaved off. Well, to my hands it feels much more of a pronounced, sharp V. Not something I go for. My heart kind of sunk. I thought I was going to have to go the route of selling it on Ebay to try to get my money back.

I called Warmoth and they were VERY accommodating. They took the neck back, no questions asked, and said I could refund or use the full amount minus shipping towards another custom build. I decided to go that route and this time ordered a Fatback. Hopefully it'll be more of a Nocaster type U shape which is my jam. Great customer service.

So after being bummed I would have to wait 6 more weeks for the neck, I looked around for the cheapest possible solution for getting a temporary neck on this thing. I ordered a GFS Basics paddlehead for $33 and $14 tuners off Amazon. I figured I could use it until the Warmoth neck comes in and recoup the money, no problem.

The GFS neck came in like this...
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So I masked it off and drew a Fender-esque shape...
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After some jigsaw work and a bunch of sanding, here's the shape...
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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by ejendres » Thu Apr 08, 2021 11:35 am

Nice work on the headstock man!

I love the color scheme you've gone for. Looks excellent

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Re: I'm back baby! Natural Jazzmaster Partscaster Build

Post by d-rock » Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:33 pm

Here's the finished product...for now with the GFS neck.

Still working on the setup and tweaking everything. I've been curious for a while now about the pickups. The demos I researched online mostly had them in Les Pauls. They sound really, really nice. They are full bodied but also have a snap or crispness to the tone. Probably due to the 25.5" scale and bolt on neck. It's probably sacrilegious to some in the offset community but I'm a big fan of the feel and response of PAF style pickups. The instrument balances so well, I've missed that since I haven't had an offset in a while.

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Last edited by d-rock on Sat May 29, 2021 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Needed color and tort

Post by d-rock » Thu May 06, 2021 10:57 am

One of the downfalls to waiting for parts to arrive is I have time to think. The main reason I did a natural JM was because I loved the wood grain on this body. However, the more I looked at this project the more I realized it has gotten a bit too far off from a Jazzblaster and what I like about offsets in general...white body, tortoise pickguard. Here's my previous partscaster before I sold it a couple years ago. Mascis body, roller bridge, chunky 1" neck, Classic Player pickups...

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I've been into projects around the house lately. I built a kitchen island and a headboard for my son's bed. I guess I'm just in that quarantine project zone. So...I sanded the body back down to 400 grit...

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Primed and painted...
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I also ordered a set of GFS Vintage Split Humbuckers. They were out of stock for a while and noticed they got restocked a week or so ago. With shipping they cost me $68. I really like the Golden Age HBs but I'm thinking of another project for them already. I'm trying to get a little more traditional Jazzblaster on this one. I had these pickups in my Rhoney Starblaster back in the day. Anyone remember that one? This project should be nicknamed "The In's and Out's of my Whims" :D :fp:
Last edited by d-rock on Sat May 29, 2021 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Needed color and tort

Post by Norrin Radd » Fri May 07, 2021 7:27 am

d-rock wrote:
Thu May 06, 2021 10:57 am
This project should be nicknamed "The In's and Out's of my Whims" :D :fp:
:D

That sounds like a good stamp for the neck pocket!

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Re: I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Needed color and tort

Post by d-rock » Sat May 29, 2021 12:22 pm

Progress.

I let the color coat cure and wet sanded from 800 to 1000, I decided to go back to the Wipe On Poly rather than spraying clear. I really dislike spraying from rattle cans because I find it is so much more work to get everything perfectly level. I actually wasn't even sure what the results would be. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think I did seven thin coats, which is deceiving, it's ultra thin.

I had masked off the cavities when I sprayed the white - it looks really clean, even if nobody will ever see it. 8)

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Got the pickups in and a tort guard. This is another one of those really inexpensive pickguards from China, something like $13 including shipping. They look nice but the tort layer of the 4-ply is very thin. Like acoustic-pickguard-material thin. The White-Black-White is regular thickness. Disappointing but I should have expected it for something so cheap.

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I also got my tracking number from the Warmoth neck V2. It should be in next week. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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Re: I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Needed color and tort

Post by d-rock » Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:32 am

As beautiful as the Descendant Vibrato was, I ultimately determined I didn't need the main feature it offered, more downward pressure on the bridge. This Saylor body has a tilted neck pocket, it can be thought of as a permanent, natural shim. I sold it to fund a tremolo pedal :fp:

Wouldn't you know that I dinged the chrome of the generic vibrato when installing it. So I sanded out the top tailpiece plate and took off the top layer of chrome. I then used steel wool to give it a brushed look.

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I also got the Warmoth Fatback JM neck in. Great work. They're still pretty backed up, it took 7 weeks from order to having it in my hands. I'm finishing it now but here are some picks of the work and thickness of the neck.

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Re: I'm back baby! Jazzblaster Build - Finished Pg. 3

Post by d-rock » Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:33 am

Finished.

I put on a couple coats of Wipe On Poly on the neck and began tweaking the seup. This thing sounds just like I wanted it to ... a big full Jazzmaster. Sounds like if you merged Sean Eden's Jazzmaster with Dean's 335 from Luna. 8)

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