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Concept:
This guitar has the working name of Jazzocaster. As you may have
guessed, its inspired primarily by the Jazzmaster. The Jazzmaster
is a pretty cool guitar by Fender with an offset waist, distinctive
upper and lower horns, strange switching operation and a crazy
trem with a really long arm.
The original's switching mechanism allowed a relatively complicated
rhythm/lead operation with seperate volumes. Sounds simple but
it was a bit convoluted. Original Jazzmasters also had two pretty
wide single coil pickups with a distinctive (if sometimes noisy)
sound.
The concept here is to use a body thats inspired by the Jazzmaster's
shape with a similar trem and bridge arangement (because lets
face it, they're pretty cool looking). We'll do away with the
two big pickups and instead we'll go with three Strat type pickups.
Switching will be a bit of a mixed bag. We'll have a standard
Strat-type, five-way toggle for pickup selection but will keep
the Jazzmaster's three-way, Gibson-style toggle on the lower horn
(just because it looks cool). The three-way, we'll use to get
some hot-rodding done. Possibly an all pickups at once or something
- it hasn't been decided yet. Most likely, this guitar will have
one volume for neck/middle and one for the bridge pickup. A master
tone will serve all pickups.
As I have a very nice piece of flamed ash for the body, I'm in
two minds about wheter to use a pickguard. It seems a shame to
cover up that lovely wood. Not using one however, presents its
own issues regarding the mounting of hardware. We can decide later
on however.
Probable Overview:
• Jazzmaster-style body from one-piece flamed ash with side
mounted jack socket.
• 22 fret rosewood fingerboard on a maple bolt-on neck.
• Jazzmaster-style trem tailpiece and bridge.
• Three Strat-style pickups - most likely DiMarzio Virtual
Vintage.
• Custom wiring configuration - two volume, one tone, five-way
toggle and three-way toggle.
• Pickguard undecided - if used, to be cream-black-cream.
Pickup covers, knobs, etc. to be cream.
Rough sketch of how finished guitar will probably look
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Update 1:
This is a picture of the Jazzocaster body.
Its been bandsawed to shape and the edges have been shaped.
The edges have also been routed into a proper 'round-over'
No cavities for neck, trem, control or pickups
have yet been routed but it is possible to see the locations
of these from the pencil lines on the body. Likewise the
comfort contours have not yet been cut but it is possible
to see where the forearm countour will be.
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Update 2:
Right. it's decided that its a shame to hide all that
nice wood, so there will be no pickguard on this guitar.
That obviously leaves the problem of how to mount the
pickups. As strat-type pickups have a base that is larger
than the actual pickup coils, mounting them directly on
the face of the body would not be the most pleasing look.
Instead, I've decided to mount the pickups from the rear
of the guitar.
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| You can see what is happening
a bit more clearly here. The pickups will mount from the rear
and only the coil covers will show from the front. The cavities
at the back will be covered with a plastic cover in the same
way as control cavities or trem cavites on many guitars. |
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