Saturday 3 August 2013

Jazzmaster Guitar Project

I have talked about this project on Twitter and Facebook but I really need to put it down in a central place. Oh wait yeah I have a Blog for that...

So anyway to bring you up to speed aside from learning to play a song all the way through... (Achieved here) I have also been playing with building a Guitar.

I have dabbled with re-wiring my old Peavey (Strat clone) which while I got sound to come back out of it... I now only have 1 pickup working and that goes straight to a Volume control (no tone and two useless pickups in the guitar) - but it makes noise and that was all I needed!

My good friend Les has been more productive and had a body lying around not doing anything so he gave it and some very nice pickups to me... This was the beginning of the Jazzmaster project.

With a standard JM pickguard - which I wasn't going to use...


I didn't want the traditional JM layout so I went for two P-90's a three-way switch, single tone and volume.

This was to choose silver or black knobs - nothing had been fixed at this stage also I hadn't got the three-way switch
I liked the contrast of the black jack cover, knobs (I went for black) and pick guard against the chrome pup plate and other fittings. with the blue burst it all seemed to work.  The neck was a lovely piece of birdseye maple with a beautiful top that has such wonderful contrasting colours and shades...

Birdseye Maple is a lovely wood (same wood used in my drum kit)

The neck is lovely both to look at and touch - can't wait to play it!
As mentioned above I am not that confident with soldering and in the end I was prepared to pay someone to do it for me. When, right out of the blue, a mate at work tells me he has heaps of guitars and has built and repaired more that a few and sure he can solder the JM up for me.

So a VERY big thanks to Brett!

All parts added - still need to finish the neck with some tuners and bits so I can string it up but the body work is done! (oh and some strap buttons)

Shiny... also flash flares (sorry) but you get the idea!
All in all I am very happy with this Guitar and the way it all came together - while I didn't end up trusting myself to do the electronics I did start and I planned it all out so that was good and while I still have a few things left these shouldn't be too hard and then I can do the set up and start playing this baby!