Li’l Jazzmaster Project

[plopswagon]

I’ve been working, at my usual snails pace on a Japanese Jazzmaster for a friend. He wanted to shield it, change the pickups and pickguard. Sounds simple enough except the pickguard was probably for an American made Jazzmaster and needed a shit ton of tweaking.

In its original state

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Shielding

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Pickguard uh oh

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Curtis Novak pups

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Filling in the pickguard holes

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[plopswagon]

Done!

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I had to fuss with the rhythm circuit roller knobs quite a bit (they were new ones to replace the janky Japanese ones.) It took a combination of adding washers and filing the guard to get it right.

I also had to also file around the pickup holes, around where the mounting screws go—a bit too much around the bridge pup, to get it to work.

It was pretty unnerving to drill out the original guard mounting holes, fill them, trim down the poplar dowels and redrill them.
It’s only an $1,800 guitar.

[NickS]

Nice work, sir.

[sunshiner]

Solid work, man! Looks super neat and classy.

[Hurb]

Looks great!

[Thom]

Nice!

[taylornutt]

I put those same Curtis Novak Pickups in my MIJ J Mascis Jazzmaster.

Phenomenal sounding pickups.

Easily my favorite sounding guitar.

[plopswagon]

I love the neck pickup, the bridge is a bit too spankytwang for what I want out of a Jazzmaster.

[taylornutt]

The JM -Fat is definitely an accurate description.