Jaguar vs Jazzmaster sizes

[jalbertochavez]

Hi everyone. I'm planning on building a Jazzmaster pretty soon. However, it'd really be more like a Jaguar. What I want is the look of the Jaguar with the full scale of the Jazzmaster. I'm curious though, and this is probably a very elementary question, is there any size difference between the body of the Jazzmaster and the Jaguar or is the scale difference all in the neck & bridge placement?  Can all the accessories of the Jaguar (control plates, pickguard, etc) be placed on the body of the Jazzmaster without it looking weird? Also, with my idea in mind, is there anything y'all think I should be warned about or be concerned with? Let me know what's up. Thank you.

 

[Unwound G]

I had the same idea sometime back and I realized that the Jag body caters for 24" scale Jag/Mustang necks on custom order only.  Initially, I thought using it with a 25.5" scale neck is no big deal since it only involves in shifting the bridge placement a little further.  After much inspection, I realized the difference between a Jag and a Jazzmaster is 1.5" in scale length and that is a lot.  The pickguard will be the main issue to address.

There are 2 ways to go about it.  Ask Warmoth to prepare the neck pocket, bridge pickup rout and bridge placement for a 25.5" scale neck on a Jag body.  For the pickguard, instruct them to leave out the bridge stud post holes and cut in place a bridge pickup rout.  The other way is to get a Jazzmaster body, buy the chrome control plate parts and modify the Jazzmaster pickguard to fit the chrome parts.  You may need some routing to widen parts of the control cavities.

Fun isn't it when you get all these brain storm going through your head ?

 

[PitchShifter]

Unwound G pretty much summed it up quite well.

Here's a Jag sitting on top of a JM with the tails lined up.

Courtesy of the offset guitar forum is a picture of the two fender sized bodies with the bodies lined up, and then with the neck pockets lined up (plenty of excellent mods and restorations for offsets on that board, so they'd be able to answer your most of your specific Jag/Jazz offset questions).

http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/index.php/topic,17936.0.html

Lastly, there's a JM in the Gallery done up to look like a Jag. The owner did the extra routing himself.

 

[jalbertochavez]

I had the same idea sometime back and I realized that the Jag body caters for 24" scale Jag/Mustang necks on custom order only.  Initially, I thought using it with a 25.5" scale neck is no big deal since it only involves in shifting the bridge placement a little further.  After much inspection, I realized the difference between a Jag and a Jazzmaster is 1.5" in scale length and that is a lot.  The pickguard will be the main issue to address.

There are 2 ways to go about it.  Ask Warmoth to prepare the neck pocket, bridge pickup rout and bridge placement for a 25.5" scale neck on a Jag body.  For the pickguard, instruct them to leave out the bridge stud post holes and cut in place a bridge pickup rout.  The other way is to get a Jazzmaster body, buy the chrome control plate parts and modify the Jazzmaster pickguard to fit the chrome parts.  You may need some routing to widen parts of the control cavities.

Fun isn't it when you get all these brain storm going through your head ?

Thank you Unwound G. You really helped shed some light on everything.  :headbang1:

 

[jalbertochavez]

Unwound G pretty much summed it up quite well.

Here's a Jag sitting on top of a JM with the tails lined up.

Courtesy of the offset guitar forum is a picture of the two fender sized bodies with the bodies lined up, and then with the neck pockets lined up (plenty of excellent mods and restorations for offsets on that board, so they'd be able to answer your most of your specific Jag/Jazz offset questions).

http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/index.php/topic,17936.0.html

Lastly, there's a JM in the Gallery done up to look like a Jag. The owner did the extra routing himself.

Thanks Pitchshifter. Your post was very useful and that picture of the JM in the gallery really let me know my idea was possible.
arty07:

 

[stubhead]

Warmoth can and will apply different routing schemes to any body - it just cost m-o-n-e-y. There are any number of Jazzmasters with rear-routing, strat-routed pickups, hard tail etc. I think Warmoth has to line up the templates by hand, instead of just poking the "Jazzmaster" button and having the CNC blast it out in one shot. I know it costs $45 to move a single pickup, but only the mysterious Warmoth pricing wizards can give you a complete answer. With enough m-o-n-e-y, you can have anything you want, dear. :toothy12:

 

[Mor Paul]

Didn't someone say recently that W wouldn't do jaguar pickups?

 

[Anaura]

I requested a Jag pup pickup route in the neck position for my JM guitar. Warmoth doesn't have a template for it. I'm having it routed locally.