ShortScale.org

I picked this up from a seller near York who'd built and painted it himself from scratch. At £80 it was a bit of a steal tbh.



The pups look like some no-name P90s - I'd like to sort out the fixing screws so it's easier to adjust the height (my best guess would be a metal or wooden baseplate glued into the rout; suggestions welcome). The trem doesn't work due to the Gibson-style bridge, but I'm fine with that. The body's really light basswood with no nitrose or poly finish; it's just blue-stained wood, so is kinda cool.

EDIT: I guess I could replace the bridge with a "roller" type, like one of these...

Seattle Jazz

http://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-B ... IY-Kit/PZU



A trem always worked fine with a TOM for me. I had more tuning stability with that setup on my Jaguar than a Mustang bridge w/heavy strings.

Reckon Courtney did him in?

in the butt

Long story short: the roller bridge doesn't fit. The posts are literally a millimetre or two too close together because, hey, it's THURSDAY so EVERYTHING FUCKING SUCKS.

Joking aside though: I'm not too bothered, because the trem probably wouldn't work properly anyway. It clicks and creaks like you'd expect a non-official brand part to do (the old unit in my CIJ JM did that) even before you throw the bridge issues into the equation, so I'm cool with it being effectively a hardtail. A JM-style P90 SG with a bolt-on neck, I guess.

The good news is, the bridge post spacing is the same as that of a CIJ Fender! So the roller bridge is now fitted to my #1 instrument, and when I work out how to remove the old bridge cups and replace them with the roller TOM's mounting rings, it really will be 100% solid. So yeah. I'll get some new strings for this partsmaster on the way home from work tomorrow and get properly acquainted with it over the weekend. I'm kinda interested to hear how P90s sound.

Paul_ could be right about the origins though...the parts all look like what's advertised on that site. Doing a quick google search, I found other online stores that sell kits to make LP Juniors, ES-335s(!) and even twelve-string Strats and Teles. Wild.

Yeah I did an accurate looking pair of LP DC Jr kits from byoguitar (one even had the full Gibson bookscroll cut in the headstock) but they don't sell them as proper-looking anymore. You can always find accurate looking kits from china digging around the eBay though.

I think someone here did a 12-string tele build from one of those kits, mabye dezb1?

Try a Wilkinson roller bridge

I had a quick look at the Wilkinson roller bridges, but I suspect that the post spacing on those isn't right either. It seems I need 73mm spacing, which is some weird Epiphone-specific standard. Most other TOM bridges I've seen so far have been in the 73.5 or 74mm range. Oh well.

A 12-string DIY build sounds like a fun project, but the shorter scale length (to alleviate the additional tension from the extra strings) and additional sparkle/jangle that you'd probably want for that sort of instrument suggests that a Jag would be a great candidate. I've had a quick look for 24" scale necks, but apart from the good-but-pricey option of Warmoth, there's not much out there. It's something else I'll keep in mind though. Who knows what might turn up?

I did one of those kits for a strat build. It ended up being a really good guitar. My plan is to do a 12 string next, but can't decide between tele or strat. I'm also undecided because if I'm working in the same school next year, I might take advantage of the fact that one of the tech teachers is a guitarist and do a custom jazzmaster type thing.