First build baritone JMA-1 and TL

Hello everyone,

After three month I finally picked up my kits from the customs office.
I got myself two kits which will be built in July.
The first one is a JMA-1 with maple 30" neck
Attachment 31328
It is one of the mahogany bodies that popped up in Feb/March.
Tuners will be Grovers and I will use Twin Loco and 12 Gauge pickups from Warman with a preamp.
I am thinking about staining the fretboard and switching the pickguard either to a black jazzmaster pickguard (that I'd need to could in order to put the bridge/tremolo in) or painting the pickguard from the kit black.
Colorwise I will probably try to pop the grain by staining and sanding it and then oil it with tru-oil.

The second one is a TL-12 body with 27" engineered rosewood neck.
Attachment 31329
Attachment 31330
It will be crimson red with black grain, black hardware and black pickguard.
Pickups will be Seymour Duncan AHB-1 Blackout, I will test installing the neck pickup hidden beneath the pickguard to achieve the esquire look.
Unfortunately the neck does not fit the body very well. The pocket is a little too big so there would be some room left and right. The string trough holes seem to be a little off but I will recheck that and it should be within tolerances.
I will try to make the engineered rosewood more sturdy by applying tru-oil.

Cheers

Good call on the Tru Oil over the engineered rosewood. I did the same thing myself. I must of put about seven coats on which might of been too many. I didn’t like the grippy feel, so I rubbed it with 0000 steel wool which gave me a result I was happy with.

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Originally Posted by DarkMark

Good call on the Tru Oil over the engineered rosewood. I did the same thing myself. I must of put about seven coats on which might of been too many. I didn’t like the grippy feel, so I rubbed it with 0000 steel wool which gave me a result I was happy with.

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I’m pleased you’ve posted that as I’ve put a few coats on my MKA-2 board, it looked nice when I wire wooled the first coat so hopefully a rub down of the latter coats should do the job.


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This weekend I started with the first build.
I wanted a s slimmer body at the horn and where the belly cut is so I started with some 80 grid sanding and went up to 600 before applying the wood filler and stain.
Attachment 31593

The idea was to pop the grain by using black wood filler and sanding it back but the effect is not as strong as I thought. Nonetheless I went on and stained the guitar with a water based mahogany stain that I bought a few month ago. It turned out a little more red and dark than I intended so I had a little fun mixing my stains and added red and a little black.
Why add black and red if it is too red and too dark? Because I kinda liked the color but I seemed a little to boring to me.
This is what I looked like after a light sanding and two thin layers of the new mixture.

First layer vs Third layer
Attachment 31594Attachment 31595

Other than that I tried a little experiment on the neck. After some of us discussed the necessity of inlays in another thread I liked the idea of black inlays on a black fretboard. So I stained the maple black and I think it works out.
Attachment 31597
On the TL I checked the fitting of the neck again. I was hoping to see some change after it adjusted a little more to the german climate. But it is still pretty loose. So I will probably try to apply some woodfiller to narrow the neck pocket when I route the hole for the humbucker.
Attachment 31596
That's it for this weekend. Until I will be able to go back to the workbench I will be shopping for some accessories (switches for phase revers, pots etc).

This weekend I cut the headstocks, rerouted and painted the TL body.
Attachment 31721
I was pretty happy with the shape of the JMA headstock (the black one), so I did the same on the other but due a glued on part coming off the TL headstock got a little slimmer.

I got myself I router and for my first run with it the routing looks pretty good I guess. Actually it doesnt matter because it will be covered anyway but still.
Attachment 31722

Staining the veneer on the TL required some testing as the stain looked a lot more purple than on a scrap piece I tried it on. But I am pretty happy with the result now.
Attachment 31723

Now I will finish the necks, route the JMA plate and clear coat the bodies.

Did you freehand that rout Van? Pretty gutsy for first time out if you did!

I did some lines with a pencil so I had a rough idea where to stop. It was an angled single coil route so it was not that hard using a small router.


Oh yes and I did a slight belly cut on the TL as I think it's more comfortable and looks a lot more pleasing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vanOverload

On the TL I checked the fitting of the neck again. I was hoping to see some change after it adjusted a little more to the german climate. But it is still pretty loose. So I will probably try to apply some woodfiller to narrow the neck pocket when I route the hole for the humbucker.
Attachment 31596
That's it for this weekend. Until I will be able to go back to the workbench I will be shopping for some accessories (switches for phase revers, pots etc).

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I would recommend you try and shim the sides of the neck pocket with birch or maple veneer and then sand it back to suit the fit you want.

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

I would recommend you try and shim the sides of the neck pocket with birch or maple veneer and then sand it back to suit the fit you want.

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Thanks for the hint.
Unfortunately I had no veneer on hand or available in town. So I applied two layers of wood filler und will check the fitting again when everything is dry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vanOverload

Thanks for the hint.
Unfortunately I had no veneer on hand or available in town. So I applied two layers of wood filler und will check the fitting again when everything is dry.

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IT should work out, as long as you can get a square sanding block in there to evenly dress the sides of the pocket, referencing off the bottom. You can make one out of some hard wood, double stick tape and sand paper.

After a few days of work I am as good as done.
I still need to take some photos at daylight but for now this should give you an idea.
Attachment 31856Attachment 31857

Short overview of what actually happened:
Tele:
Grover tuners
Truoil on neck
Stained body (red, mahagony and black front, black on sides and back)
Routed pickup hole
Belly cut and smoothed neck area
Extended ferrule holes
Lacquered body
Duncan Blackout Pickups (neck pu hidden)
Graph Tech string trees

JM:
Grover tuner
Extended belly and arm cut aswell as slightly reshaped horn
Stained/oiled body, fretboard and neck (mahagony and some red on neck)
Painted scratchplate, tremolo cover and black control plate
Copper foil in cavities
Warman pickups (12gauge and twin loco)
Coil tap pushpull poti for single coil humbuckers
Coil tap and split switch for humbucker
Phase reverse push pull poti for mid pickup
Switch altered to activate all pickups in second position
Blocked tremolo
22nF Orange drip cap on tone poti

I am still waiting for the cap for the active pickups and I need to install string trees on the jazzmaster which I currently test on the tele. Now I need to do truss rod and intonation when I am set on string gauge.

After playing on the guitars I started thinking about sanding the necks thinner. They are fatter than my bass neck. One three way switch died on me. As it was a cheap circuit style swich I can't say if it was broken or was fried while soldering.

Sadly the grover tuners are to small for string thicker than .60. For now I cut them to fit inside the locking hole. I will try to get it a little bigger.

Cheers

Additional photos

And of the other guitar

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

IT should work out, as long as you can get a square sanding block in there to evenly dress the sides of the pocket, referencing off the bottom. You can make one out of some hard wood, double stick tape and sand paper.

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I just remembered that I forgot to mention what I did abour this. So as you know I applied some woodfiller, which I sanded using a square file. At first the neck fit really nice but eventhough I did my best to apply the filler evenly the neck was tilted slightly resulting in the high e string being on the very edge of the frets. When I sanded a little more I was able to reduce this to a minimum but lost that tight fit. So basically I went back applied a little filler again just to reduce the gap and clamped it down and to the right angle sidewise.
It wouldn't stay in without the screws but theres more surface touching, less ugly gaps and from my perspective it's okay for what one can to without going crazy.
Thanks again for the hints!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vanOverload

I just remembered that I forgot to mention what I did abour this. So as you know I applied some woodfiller, which I sanded using a square file. At first the neck fit really nice but eventhough I did my best to apply the filler evenly the neck was tilted slightly resulting in the high e string being on the very edge of the frets. When I sanded a little more I was able to reduce this to a minimum but lost that tight fit. So basically I went back applied a little filler again just to reduce the gap and clamped it down and to the right angle sidewise.
It wouldn't stay in without the screws but theres more surface touching, less ugly gaps and from my perspective it's okay for what one can to without going crazy.
Thanks again for the hints!

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This is always a concern with fillers and shimming. Unless you can quantify the gaps and install dimensionally appropriate shimming/filler, there is always the danger of going too far one way or t’other.
Glad you got it sorted to a conclusion! They look the business, you must post up sound demos to give us an idea of the sound.


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

They look the business, you must post up sound demos to give us an idea of the sound.

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Thanks, I will. I just don't have my interface and mics with me right now.

I just recognized I haven't told about the intonation issues I had/have.
I want to do that now so anyone who might want to do something similar and knows it.

The Tele is about 4-5mm short and the jazzmaster even a little more.
I don't really know why. I saw it coming on the jazzmaster but thought it would be okay with the telecaster.
Unfortunately I had measured the string holes on the telecaster instead of the bridge saddles which obviously can't go back all the way on a string through bridge.
I decided to try to guitars as they are and the telecaster is off by about a quarter on the 12th fret, so will probably just enlarge the string holes in the bridge to achieve another 3-4mm as I can't move the bridge without a risk of the routing showing.
The jazzmaster is all over the place which might force me to give it a hardtail that covers the routing but sits further back. Ideal would be a 2 point trem that allows a little more offset (which might be hard to impossible)
Ideas are still welcome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vanOverload

I just recognized I haven't told about the intonation issues I had/have.
I want to do that now so anyone who might want to do something similar and knows it.

The Tele is about 4-5mm short and the jazzmaster even a little more.
I don't really know why. I saw it coming on the jazzmaster but thought it would be okay with the telecaster.
Unfortunately I had measured the string holes on the telecaster instead of the bridge saddles which obviously can't go back all the way on a string through bridge.
I decided to try to guitars as they are and the telecaster is off by about a quarter on the 12th fret, so will probably just enlarge the string holes in the bridge to achieve another 3-4mm as I can't move the bridge without a risk of the routing showing.
The jazzmaster is all over the place which might force me to give it a hardtail that covers the routing but sits further back. Ideal would be a 2 point trem that allows a little more offset (which might be hard to impossible)
Ideas are still welcome.

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Hey Van,

I've been lurking this thread (and every other Baritone thread) for a couple of weeks wondering if this situation might be the case. I've been worried it would be, but hoping I was wrong.

When you say "I don't really know why" I'm a bit unsure of how uncertain you are since you say you saw it coming with the Jazzmaster too haha. I've got a pretty good idea of the why, but I'll omit it for now and if you want me to drop the ramblings, then let me know and I'll pop that in.

But to try and be actually useful now:

I reckon you're absolutely right with the Tele bridge, if you can get the bridge holes to line up a bit further back that would work (as much as it would hurt to put a drill through a Babicz, they're such nice bridges). Tele bridges should be forgiving enough with the intonation range they have, so hopefully that does the trick.

The Jazzmaster, I'm not sure there's really any standard Trems out there with deep enough intonation ranges. And yea, if you were to get a hardtail or something on there it could work but it'd be a struggle to get the routing covered, maybe unless you made a new pickguard for it.

But, the other thought I had is Fanned Fret capable Tremolos.

Attachment 32028

There's not a lot of choices for these available, but they do exist, they should be able to handle setting the intonation back, and I would suspect without doing any extra routing at all, maybe worst case scenario would be plug and re-drill the trem posts. Downsides though, you probably wouldn't have a ton of room to get upward whammy action (though dives would still be normal) and, man they ain't cheap.

Attachment 32029

Attachment 32030

These ones are by Apollo Music Parts, and T4M (Technology for Musicians) respectively.

Nonetheless, I reckon these are both possible to save!! Which is good cos the stains on the body look good! Big ups on that!! And I hope they come together for ya!!

Saying I don't know why I meant that I don't know why the neck does not fit the length/routings of the body.
I mean how will you make them fit on anything but a blank body? Maybe you could compensate it by using a non-string through hardtail but it would still be maxed out without any room for adjustments.

Drilling through the Babicz is indeed a shame but I guess it is the easiest fix for the Tele.
Going hardtail on the Jazzmaster isn't perfect but as I blocked the trem anyway as I don't want to max out the springs just for them to handle the string gauge.
Fanfret Tremolos are a good idea. But the cheapest I found are 90 Euros from China and a quality one would cost more than the rest of the guitar.

I will give myself a little time to evaluate all options and a look out for better solutions.

Thanks for the hint and compliment!

Ahh right, yea fair call. Yea itd all be down to bridge adjustments of some form.

Ohh, I hadn't thought of the "cheap" ones like that, 90's not toooooo bad but yea the quality ones are insanely pricey.

Yup take the time with it! Im sure there's other people on here who'd have better ideas than myself too haha

No worries! And hope it goes well!

I did some research and found that even the fan fret tremolos would be too short to fix the Jazzmaster.
For this reason I think I will put in a telecaster bridge (Wilkinson WTB) as it will cover the pole holes and routing and allow an ashtray cover. Let's be honest a monstrous jazzmaster/jaguar with four pickups and a tele bridge will probably look pretty rad ... but probably could use something to tone it down.

I will reroute the tremolo routing so it takes a tele single coil and add another Warman dual blade pickup (T-Raill Blazer). As the guitar has an awful lot of switching options anyway I will stick to that path. I haven't quite settled on which options to add because I am not sure whether it is more useful to do some parallel/serial/single coil stuff with the lower pickups or rethink the whole switching concept.

A quick and dirty idea of what it could look like without the cover.
Attachment 32096

Nothing new on the Tele as soon as I have enough time to spend a weekend in the workshop I will drill string through holes that are further back into the babicz and see if it is still restringable or breaks the string due to the back and forth angle going on. If the later should be the case I would switch to a hardtail bridge and a pickup mounting frame.

Really dig the new plan!! The 4 pickups gives me vibes of goofy vintage electrics, which I'm all about. No clue what to do about switching options, I'd be intimidated as heck by Series/Split/Parallel x4 plus anything else, but that does seem an obvious route.

Good luck with it! Smash it!!