Made to order - full project takes 8-10 weeks!
Ever seen a Paisley Jazzmaster? Yes, they do appear from time to time, but this iconic design is very hard to find on an offset (much more common on a Tele or Strat). Guitar for sale will come with a handmade custom alder body sporting that classic Paisley pattern over a silver backing. You choose if the burst will be pink, black or gold; and you also choose the level of distress. Glorious nitro relic finish with all the crazy crackling and patina or new old stock shiny nitro!
Whatever you choose, nitro finish will keep ageing gracefully in your hands over the years. Pickguard also has clear nitro finish and handmade Paisley pattern. Inner cavities are fully shielded with high-grade copper foil, that together with the copper-backed pickguard create a so-called "Faraday Cage", that helps curb any interference. Guitar will not exceed 4 kg and will be very very resonant and loud acoustically, retaining all those comfy vintage-accurate contours.
We love to use USA-made modern style necks on these custom builds - big headstocks, medium jumbo frets and flatter fretboard radius make for a very effective design. However, we can go for a more vintage-accurate route if that's preferable or make the neck from scratch if you want a more exotic design.
Choice of Jazzmaster pickups is truly great these days - we love to combine a warm and lush Seymour Duncan Vintage neck pickup for the overwound and p90-esque Seymour Duncan Hot bridge pickup. Fender V-Mod pickups are also pretty lovely - as well as the J Mascis signature ones if you are into alt rock and stuff.
Original Jazzmaster wiring was developed by Leo to enchant the jazz players (who ignored the guitar altogether) , but the whole rhythm/lead circuit design is a bit of a hit-and-miss. So instead, this guitar will have individual volume controls for each pickup (big pots) and individual tone controls (roller pots) with different capacitors for each pickup for even more tonal variety.
Wait, but there's more! Slider on the upper horn engages both pickups in-series, where both coils essentially act as a spaced humbucker, doubling the output and overdriving any tube amp into sweet heaven. This sound is incredibly balanced thanks to all the twang from the bridge pickup, warmth of the neck and lack of mid scoop, that you usually get in a more traditional "middle" position, where pickups are engaged in-parallel. With the slider down and using the 3-way toggle switch you will still get those 3 traditional tones.
And this is still not all! If your 3-way toggle is in the neck position and you move the slider switch up - you will get silence. Which means in this configuration your slider switch turns into a killswitch for all those brilliant percussive Tom Morello/Jonny Greenwood style stutter tricks.
Traditional wiring is also an option, obviously.
We started using Hosco Japan vibratos instead of Fender ones only recently, but the quality of the components and the tuning stability of these units is very impressive and consistent. Vibrato works very smoothly and the springs used in these are very responsive, yet stable, always returning to pitch. Tremolo has the lock function, that helps stay in tune in case of a string break. The original long tremolo arm stays in nicely and doesn't flop around.
Traditional Jazzmaster bridge famous for its rattling and string slippage was never even considered for this project. We will use a Hosco Japan bridge properly radiused for either 7.25-inch or 9.5 inch fretboard with solid barrel saddles. Buzzstop roller attachment is an option as well. Now you can hit those strings as hard as you want and use the tremolo till your hands hurt.
Guitar needs to be paid in full before the project can begin.
Let's start building!