Jazzmaster Update: Fine Tuning
It’s been a couple months since I built the Jazzmaster, and after playing at a band practice and having more time to use it, I found that there were some sticking points I wanted to change. One was the bridge. I was not a fan of the stock JM bridge—too loose, and to quirky. Not to mention, first time I used it at practice, one of the saddle screws fell out. So I did a lot of reading, and after thinking about it, I decided to go full force: Buzz Stop, Mustang Bridge, and going from 10s to 11s on the strings. Last night I finally got some time to make the changes, and I have to say what a huge improve it is. The increased string tension from the buzz stop not only helps the strings stay in place, but it makes the guitar have more sustain and a little harder...
Jazzmaster Phase 3: All the other stuff (it’s done!)
My impatience got the best of me this weekend. I squeezed in whatever time I could to work on the Jazzmaster and finally got it all set up late Sunday night. I started out by tackling the remaining wiring tasks, such as installing the pickups and running the ground wire: While the wiring harness I bought from Hoagland Brothers was very nicely wired, I struggled to keep the extra pickup wires neatly contained. I did what I could, then added the foam pickup supports, and placed the pickguard with some masking tape, in case I needed to get in later and tweak (or fix!) any of the electronics: Almost ready! Neck was installed after this: After stringing it up and doing some quick playing, I realized that the nut was just way too high—any open chords I played...
Jazzmaster Phase Two: pickguard wiring, bridge cups, tremolo install
Spent a fair amount of time on the Jazzmaster tonight and made some great progress. I started out with attaching the wiring harness to the pickguard. One unexpected thing I ran into was that the pot shafts for the volume and tone controls were too thick for the pro-drilled pickguard holes. I used a rat tail file to open them up more and that seemed to work nicely. The pots also had pretty long shafts, so I added some extra washers on the inside to keep the knobs from sitting too high off the pickguard. Similarly, the roller pot shafts for the neck pickup were too thick to fit through the mounting plate, so I used my dremel tool to open those up a little. Once completed, I had to do some more tweaking, but it finally came out right. Next, I moved on to the...
So, I’m building a Jazzmaster from parts.
As if I didn’t have enough guitars already, I recently decided to sell of a ton of music and recording gear I had not used in forever, or just simply didn’t want any more. I was able to upgrade/crossgrade a ton of my gear, and one of those things included buying the parts to build my own Jazzmaster. I’ve been wanting to build a guitar for a long time, but the cost of locating all of the parts always ended up being about the same or more than just buying a guitar that was all set to go. One day while browsing eBay, I came across some auctions by MJT Custom Aged Guitar Finishes. They do custom painting and aging of aftermarket guitar parts to give them that worn look. They were offering a package, where they painted/aged all of the items for a...
Loop Switch Pedal Build, Phase 2
So I actually finished this project, for which I documented Phase 1 a few months ago. Good news is that I was able to finish the project in one evening (preparing and affixing the waterslide decal) and an afternoon of soldering. It turned out pretty great. Yeah, the decal dried sort of wonky, but it was my first try. I’ll take it. The pedal has performed just as I hoped, too. The only issue I’ve had was the right LED flickering randomly. Upon opening the pedal up and inspecting, I realized the nut on the bottom that was holding the LED in place had come loose and was shorting it out. Easy fix, right? Not so much. At least not when one breaks the LED-to-resistor connection while trying to tighten the nut. Le sigh. So I res0ldered it, successfully...
New Project: Loop Switch Pedal Build, Phase 1
So while the Bianchi project is on hiatus while I wait for the frame to be re-painted (long, crow-eating post to follow with more details on that one), I’ve been immersing myself in music again. When I found myself with some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket recently, I decided to spend it on something that would also allow me to learn a little something about electronics. After really thinking about what I wanted out of my pedalboard—and studying the pedalboard of The Joy Formidable‘s guitarist, Ritzy Bryan), I realized the key to being able to switch on and off an entire bank of pedals at once is a loop switcher. What is a loop switcher, you ask? It’s a pedal that simply has one or more effects loops built into it. The guitar...
About
Hi, my name is Bret. I do lots of DIY electronics projects (with an emphasis on audio effects and synths), as well as guitar builds/repairs, and some tube amp stuff under the name eightysix audio.
Sometimes I post writing, photography and other DIY pursuits. Hope you enjoy and gain something useful out of this. Thanks for visiting.
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