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so i get a call from one of the old timers here in town on monday saying that he wanted to put a bigsby on his tele and his friend want me to fix up some guitar called a jaguar.
i got really excited.
1. i need money
2. i was hoping it was a vintage jag in need of a small setup that i could just play for a week.

well.
first thing is first.
his "tele" was a 68 body, bridge, and neck pup
with replaced bridge pickup, control plate, pots etc.
but the neck.
well the neck is certainly interesting, it seems that its a v-cut 57, very cool, he gave me some history on it.
but at anyrate, i had to let him know that there was no way in hell i was putting a humbucker in the neck of his tele body, nor would i put a bigsby on it, thats just stupid.
told him i thought i had a tele body or two laying around that i would give him so his 68 did get butchered.
ok, so now on to the neck.
at first glance it seemed like it was all og, and unmolested.
welllll...... not so much, when i got it home i realized that it had a re-fret, done years and years ago( a really good job tho)
it had been over-sprayed, the pencil date is barely there and the tuners are newer, not new, just newer.
it seems that the only original things on the neck are.
1. wood.
2. decal(very cool)
3. nut(go figure)
and now for the pics of it.










and believe it or not, that is a 4 piece ash body, but they did a DAMN good job or matching the grain.
and apparently it was a blue color at some point in its life, but i belive it was originally natural.
ok, on to the jaguar.
indeed it was a vintage jag(WOOHOO) and it was in pretty good shape, still had the case, the bar, missing the mute, but hey, what can you do right?
now here is the kicker. his buddy bought this about 15 years ago cuz he thought it looked cool........... but he always hated one thing about it..... and until he heard of me and my obsession with jags he just had to live with it......
the prior owner to him put.... humbuckers in it(i know, it gets worse)
BUT! kept the original pickups in the case(hell yeah!)
so i get it home, and im thinking that it will be an easy in and easy out, and the worst eye sore is passed me.
well, not so much. the routing for the buckers is just down right scary. totally a drunken job by a novice with too much time.
but at anyrate.
here are the pics.





brace yourself for this one.

What do you do and how can I do it

But I'm glad you wouldn't touch the tele, it's a crime to route for a bucker in there, and the jag...*sigh*

Fucking hell. There's nothing you can really do with the Jag, is there? I suppose you could route it neatly and fill it, and reroute for jag pickups, but I'm not sure what the advantage that would be. I think it would make me feel better.

that is awesome.

that jag is way bad ass. gonna put it back to stock/clean up the routes? new pickguard?

do that boy a solid!

nice tele, i quite like guitars with history
but, the jag...

yea, i made some mohog inserts that fit the routes pretty decently(not that im going to route them back out) but becuz the route depth is about 2x deeper than it should be.
already made a new guard,
and you know, i always thought that the tort i got looked pretty decent.
well, it looks like shit compared to the vintage stuff.
observe.(you can sorta see the mohog block in the neck pup area)

in reality, the jaguar is done as we speak except for wiring it back together and stringing it up.
but the guy wants the tele first so im going to hold off on the jag for today and get back with it tomorrow.
this is the mockup of the tele incase anyone cares. i still gotta make a new pg for it, find a 5 way switch, wire it up and see how he likes it, if he does, then it goes off to paint(same folks that painted mo rocca's romo bronco) he wants it to be butterscotch, i love the idea.

robert(original) wrote: told him i thought i had a tele body or two laying around that i would give him so his 68 did get butchered.

Just to clear this up, are you making him a new body or are you doing work on his one?

oh, no i meant "did not"
once i explained to him that in reality he could score a body off of me and have what he wants for the same price, and keep his vintage peice unmolested and sell it on ebay for a pretty penny he was like " yea man, thats a good idea, hahaha"
he is an old stoner, cool guy tho.

robert(original) wrote:

thats classy!
but i can see why you wouldn't do that to the og
pretty sweet work though robog
black guard?

If only everyone was so easy to talk into buying a new body instead of hacking up a collectible one

yessir, black guard indeed.
and this is going to sound wierd but im probly going to have to use mother of pearl, upsidedown, cuz i don't have a black peice big enough.
i thought about using the old guard(its not from 57, or 68,) but its deffinitly older than i am, and is probly worth something to someone as it is.
i forgot to mention that the tele came from a luthier in jamestown(mel mccolough) and alot of it was done before he got it, and he peiced it backtogether(it actually had a 57 body) thru the years before he sold it to the current owner.

DuoSonicBoy wrote:If only everyone was so easy to talk into buying a new body instead of hacking up a collectible one

Hahahaha.
Robert you get a lot of awesome work I see.

not really, for the most part i get shitty guitars and retards with a 10 dollar limit, but they need 100 bucks worth of work done to them, so for the most part i just say " buy a new guitar, 10 bucks will only get you strings"
altho i am rather suprised, i worked on a 62 jag(all oriniginal minus the nut, even had the mute intact) about 5 months ago and i thought it was the only one i would ever see in this town, up until last monday anyway.
and for some reason i have had ALOT of epiphone les pauls come thru here in the last 2 months, at least 4 anyway.
but yea, these two, these are why i like doing this kinda stuff.
i hate the mundayne setups and crap, it gets old quick.

robert(original) wrote:i hate the mundayne setups and crap, it gets old quick.

better than MUDVAYNE setups, OG.

back to the tele neck.

the FENDER LOGO ON IT IS FUCKING HUGE
plus back then they had flying saucer string trees not string tree string trees.....but that could be replaced easily...i would find a round one if you could!!!!








btw i love how on your tele neck the part on the headstock on the curve up to the nut is fucking dirt brown. you cant just go to the store and buy dirt brown headstock joints. that kind of shit makes me hot

while researching tele headstocks for this thread i found this fucking thing. holy shit. i mean its a 74 so im sure its going to fall apart any day and plays like shit but if any of you had something that looked like this hanging on your wall at home i would suck your dick.

THAT's what it would take.... interesting.

robroe wrote:while researching tele headstocks for this thread i found this fucking thing. holy shit. i mean its a 74 so im sure its going to fall apart any day and plays like shit

I don't know about that man, we had two '72 Teles come in when I worked at Guitar Center....one we bought and sold within a month, the other one was transferred in from another store by one of the guitar sales guys for himself after he loved the first one we had so much.

Honestly the first one was probably the best sounding/playing Tele I've ever played, the 2nd that my coworker ended up buying, was OK, but not as nice a piece of wood. Either way neither one of them felt like shit that was going to fall apart

robroe wrote:

but that's a '53 though. I think they changed to the "butterfly" string tree in '56.

oh and BTW, just for reference... I got one o' those flying saucer ones at guitar center

Yeah I put the circular string tree on my AV '57 strat after I saw pics of some '54-'56 strats with them. I love the way it looks on the small strat headstock.