Cinder Red T-Master/JazzCaster

[Jet-Jaguar]

I'd been thinking about a telecaster for a while, but I really wanted something with contours for comfort.  And then I saw this "T-master" body in the showcase, and ordered it up.  Put off buying a neck until the Thanksgiving day sale.  The details:

Alder body
Pau Ferro/Pau Ferro Neck
Sperzel Tuners
Gotoh Standard Tele bridge.
GFS Vintage Split" Neck Humbucker
Seymour Duncan tapped Quarter-Pound tele bridge pickup
4-Way Fender switch
TBX tone control

Over-all, I'm very happy with it. There are some things I wish I'd done differently (like use a ruler and make sure my tuner peg holes were all lined up) but it's pretty much what I expected to get as far as the tele sound.  It has a lot of twang. I can't quite figure out how to get a Andy summers sound out of it, but I think that's just my playing. The Pau Ferro neck is pretty cool ... I'm impressed with how smooth it feels, and it definitely has that high-end bite; that and the jazz-master shape makes this really nice to play.

The Quarter-pound has the tele sound, especially when tapped. I was worried it wouldn't sound right.

And I'm not as familiar with what a Fender wide-range pickup is supposed to sound like, but the GFS seems to be in the right ball park. I really bought it because I needed to be cheap, and I was worried it would sound like crap, but I like it.

I think the only thing I'm not happy with is that pickguard; it doesn't quite fit with the control plate.  I need to measure it to see if it's the plate (which is generic, but does fit standard pots) or the pickguard. Not sure what I'm going to do about it either way, but it's an eyesore now.

But I learned a lot of things from this build:

• Be certain that you can fit humbucker legs into a humbucker route. A Wide-range humbucker route is very different, and "vintage" humbuckers like the SD '59 can have longer legs than normal. 
• There are metric and standard tele control plates to fit metric and standard pots, and Fender makes both, make sure you get the right one.
• Line up your peg markings for your tuners with a ruler.  It's amazing how just eyeballing something, you'd think it's straight, but it's not. 
• Shielded wire, that uses strands of wire instead of foil, can screw you over if one of the strands sneaks out and grounds your signal. 
• Playing with pickup height to get the sound right ends up making more sense than trying to fit a measurement. 
• The big one: I had three guitar projects I was trying to do over my christmas vacation.  I'm never going to try to do that again.  But if I ever build another guitar, I'm going to start with a parts list, and check everything off as I buy it, so I don't end up missing this piece or that piece, or buy the wrong capacitor, etc.
• Clean your guitar of fingerprints before taking pictures

Later, I'm going to try to get some better pictures.

 

[Rickgrxbass]

Not bad at all!  :headbang: Something in the J-master family is definitely on my wish list; maybe the tax man will be kind this year...

 

[Jack Michaelson]

Looks great.

 

[bagman67]

Swanky.  I've been having recurrent Jazz-a-ma-Telecaster fantasies lately.  Maybe I'll take the plunge.

 

[Ace Flibble]

Huh, I've been thinking of doing almost the exact same build, only with a reverse-angle bridge pickup and white instead of red.

I certainly approve :icon_thumright: