I should be able to do it for you if you still need it. Let me know some more details of what you have and what you need.

I've had exactly the same thing hapen to me - big cracks opening up from the bridge. Mineral spirits or naphtha lubricate the sanding just the same as water, but evaporate quicker so they don't have chance to soak into the wood and make it swell up in the same way. Just test it on the pickup cavity ...

If you wet sand with white spirit (mineral spirits in the US?) you'll avoid the swelling and cracking you get with water. Don't get too frustrated - it takes ages but it'll look great when it's done.

So how will you deal with the extra 3/4" between the nut and the tuners? Surely it'll just expose the truss rod end and an ugly flat area of the maple.

If you're keeping the bridge where it is, changing the scale of the neck involves moving the nut position, so to get a 24" scale neck you'd have to move the nut 1 1/2" nearer to the heel. Just a guess, but I'd say that's going to look pretty wrong.

I recently wired a 3-pickup JM with a 6-position rotary to give everything except all three in parallel (would you ever really want that?) - I can post a diagram if you'd like. A jag plate with 3 individual switches for the pickups would work, too.

Without hesitation, for me it would be a Yamaha SG-3



Quality-wise, they're easily on a par with 60s Fenders. Just properly great guitars.

When I had my JM tuned B-B I used the bottom 6 strings from an 11-65 7-string set and it worked perfectly - just a shade more tension than the normal 11s. Going B-B means the top five strings are more or less the same tuning and tension as the bottom five strings E-E, so if you want to keep the same...

Maplin sell DPDT toggle switches that would work,. Some are quite small and weedy, but you should be able to find something beefy enough.

Might be worth a try searching 'dpdt toggle' on ebay, too.

taylornutt wrote:What kind of metal are these plates made from? Are the Japanese plates different from the AVRI/Vintage plates? (I am talking about normal stock plates)

Paul's plates are 2mm stainless steel, polished right up. US and Japanese ones are both chromed - steel, as far as I know.

So as is mustang switches won't fit in the upper bout? Not on a Jag, the cavity is too short. I had to rout the cavity slightly wider on the Jag with the diagonals, too. There's no problem getting them in on a JM, but they don't go exactly where the rollers are. The only way of getting two mustang ...

Ah yeah, this one:



I made that guard for him. I've just made a gold anodized guard for Finboy with the same switch holes.

The guy for the stainless steel plates is Paul Rhoney

Paul Rhoney makes the hex plates with two mustang switches mounted horizontally, if that's any good to you. The Jag with the mustang switches in the top plate might have been one of mine... This one? http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd187/theworkoffire/Commissioned%20Work/DSCN3907.jpg The switches...

The best way is with a reamer, but sandpaper wrapped round a pencil or a screwdriver shaft will work fine - use something that's only just thin enough to go in the hole.

Stereordinary on Offset makes them every so often, any switch configuration you need. The only other maker I've known is Christophe Huort in France.

I've run into this before. My Jag and JM neck templates (which were both cut directly from late 60s necks with F-tuners) are 119 and 120mm spacing respectively. Vintage Fs must be slightly smaller. I've just measured some re-issues I have knocking about and they're the same 123mm as yours, and some ...

Doesn't look like he's a big fan of intonation adjustment either...

and my own tweak of the Starcaster - a bit closer to that Ibanez shape:

If they've done the switching right so you can choose which coil to cut on each pickup that'll be a really great guitar. I had a Jazzmaster with re-issue wide ranges wired like that and it was loads of fun - you could practically cut the top or bottom three strings, or have the bass from one pickup ...

See now I can't look at those pickups without thinking of Vegas jumpsuit legs...