First build baritone JMA-1 and TL

[vanOverload]

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.


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

[vanOverload]

Additional photos

[vanOverload]

And of the other guitar

[vanOverload]

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.

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!

[FrankenWashie]

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!

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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[vanOverload]

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

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

[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.

[B'Lark]

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.

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.



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.





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!!

[vanOverload]

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!

[B'Lark]

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!