Through several days of searching, and weeks of emailing every neck-making luthier I could find, I basically had to shelf the idea for now. However, the searches brought me to a site doing licensed Fender necks. Left handed, and for a reasonable price. I spec'd out a neck like I had before with Guitarmill, when I did my other two projects. The price was pretty much the same as it was back then. It got my thoughts going to do another shortscale build.
Unsure what to make, though, I went through several ideas I'd had in the past. A shortscale Tele, Strat, etc. None of them seemed exciting or useful, I already have two perfect guitars that I built before. I started playing some new stuff with a guy, melodic off-time stuff. I tended to play stuff like that every time I picked up my Jaguar. I really like my Jaguar for that sort of thing, but it's just too rare of a guitar now to use live, or shuttle to practice. If it got stolen, busted up, or lost, I could not replace it. Also, it has things I don't like about it. I thought I could just make my own "Player Jaguar" that fucking Fender refuses to make in lefty. It's thanks to those assholes my Jaguar is so rare anyway.
But the cost of one of these projects, I really couldn't justify it.
Meanwhile I decided I didn't like my Ibanez ORM-1, I kept trying to use it in place of the Jag, but it just didn't feel right, and it didn't sound right. I really loved the mahogany body and neck, but otherwise it didn't feel good. I decided if I sold it, I could fund the Jaguar project. I put it up on Reverb, still hasn't sold yet, but I'm probably going to drop the price soon. Got about 30 watchers over the last month, but no offers, other than scam emails trying to get me to sell it off-site. I am probably asking too much for it, it's just hard to price considering there are basically none of them in left-handed in the US, I got it from Thom in the UK, where they were actually released in lefty.
Anyway, I got excited and started specc'ing out the new guitar. I went back to my old thread for the "Supersonic", and I had mocked up variants in the beginning to be more Jaguar-like, but ended up making the upper horn a tracing of my green Broncomaster. I liked the idea of a lighter-weight, slightly smaller Jaguar.
I am keeping the one thing I liked about the ORM, the mahogany neck/body, and inspired by my Martin D-15, I decided on this:
(This is technically a mockup of a Jazzmaster that I did some editing on)
- Screenshot at 2022-11-16 11-59-33.png (147.37 KiB) Viewed 436 times
- mahogany body, smaller lines than the Jaguar, based on the tracing of my Supersonic. I overlaid my Jaguar and got the horn from that, then blended the lines. Since mahogany is heavier, I figure the smaller size of the Supersonic would be a better base than my actual Jaguar. To reduce weight more, I am using the same thin body thickness we used on the Broncomaster, 40mm, which in alder is extremely light. It makes the guitar extremely comfortable.
- Jaguar/Jazzmaster trem, Mustang bridge. I was originally going to go with the Musicmaster bridge like I did on my last two projects, it's just the best bridge Fender has ever made, but the weird ringing/natural reverb effect the real Jaguar has convinced me I had to go with the actual Jaguar trem. I am not really happy about this, I'd rather the string through setup, and I'll have to do the trick I used on my Jaguar of cutting some aluminum tubing to lock the bridge posts into the thimbles to make it stable. But, that weird bridge angle is necessary for the sound of the Jag, and this has to replace that guitar, so that's the plan.
- Dark brown tort pickguard, I basically was trying to figure out what color looked the best, and looked at my D-15, and that settled it. Dark brown tort looks amazing on mahogany. I might need to find some transparent black paint to darken it up, finding a decent source of this guard material has been a challenge.
- Bridge pickup, my standard trem-spaced Duncan JB. This time, I am actually going to use a neck pickup, so I'm putting a Duncan JB Jr there, since I already have one on hand. I'm not positive if it'll be the right spacing, though, since that's meant for bridge, but I suppose I'll find out. I'm going to have the neck spot routed for a full size bucker, just in case I want to switch to the Duncan-suggested pairing of a Jazz in the neck, though I haven't been able to find those in white. I'm not sure they exist. I just want the option if I decide to do that later.
- Right handed Mustang control plate, for my Sonicstang I found out that getting a left-handed Jaguar control plate is impossible, so I ended up using a right-handed Mustang Bass control plate instead. It worked out okay, but it has a slightly odd shape that Cooter and I had to do some work on to make it fit, and ultimately it's the one thing I wasn't happy with on that build. I realized that lefty Mustang plates were also impossible to get, hence I had to use a right-handed one and flip it over to use it on my Broncomaster. That's when I realized, if I put a right-handed Mustang guitar plate on this, it would curve the same direction as the Jaguar plate is supposed to go. So, I'm using that this time for the control plate. 1M volume pot, no tone pot. I don't like them. I normally put a switch where the tone should be. Which leads to the next bit:
- 3-switch Jaguar plate. Again, this is to bring over a feature I added to my Jaguar, the series-parallel switching. I have plans for these switches, but I have really been scratching my head trying to come up with a way to make this actually work the way I want it to. I don't think it's actually possible.
-- I want the sliders to each control series-parallel for each pickup, and then the last one put the pickups themselves into series-parallel, how I have my Jag wired up. This leaves me with no selector switch, but I have that switch near the jack to use. However, I haven't yet been able to sort out a wiring configuration that allows me to leave them in series, and then toggle to single pickups. There's going to be one of them not connected right in that situation. I'm still working this part out.
I wasn't going to start this thread until I ordered the neck, which I was waiting to do when the ORM sold, which still hasn't happened. I just figured why not, I ordered the white Duncan JB and it arrived today, so I'm now committed to making this build.
Let's just hope this doesn't take me 9 goddamn years to complete like my last one.
