baritone guitars for non-doom usage?

[dubkitty]

interesting. it seems like offsets have certain advantages as baritones…the bodies balance long necks better, the bridges and tailpieces don’t pose problems with strings passing through them, and IMO Jazzmaster pickups are more versatile than Strat and Tele pickups and better at big round lows.

[dubkitty]

i got a good offer on a Squier CVJM i was watching on eBay and ordered it; it should be here by Saturday. so we’re getting close to having a baritone initially assembled for proof of concept. i need to work on the $60 baritone neck, sanding the fingerboard and polishing it before ordering the tuners. once that stuff is done i’ll swap the current JM neck and electronics to the blue body, put the other stuff in the red body, mount the neck and see how it goes. the eventual plan is to replace the tremolo with that odd extended tailpiece. i was going to put WRHBs in, but if i’m using the Guyatone pickup behind the bridge the JM pickups will blend better. i also could run the third pickup into the rhythm circuit volume and tone controls, wiring them like conventional volume and tone pots. but the tailpiece is currently out of stock so that’ll have to wait.

[Zork]

What strings are you going to use?

[dubkitty]

i haven’t gotten that far yet. probably a similar gauge to the set i specced out for the normal-scale neck, or perhaps a bit lighter to compensate for the string length. whatever i do, those Tone Ninja tuners will handle it. i assume that if i use a pre-existing set i’ll have to order them online because nobody in a city this size is going to stock them.

[dubkitty]

another reason not to use WRHBs is that the black Xaviere kinda-Jazzmaster body and the spare JM neck would make a dandy WRHB platform with an offset tremolo. when i have that in hand i’ll only have one more electric on my want list, and i don’t really need that. or i could use it on the other body Charlie gave me, an ash Telemaster body that weighs a literally staggering 7.2 pounds with the controls, bridge, and neck mini-humbucker. it would be quick to finish, but i don’t really want a Telemaster.

[dubkitty]

since we last spoke the new blue CVJM arrived. it turns out that i didn’t need to do nearly as much as i expected. i actually like the electronics in the new JM better than the old ones, which i was quite happy with. and the laurel fingerboard is as smooth as the rosewood board on the old one. so in the end all i had to change out was the bridge, tremolo, and the white amp-style knobs. i didn’t even have to re-intonate it.

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everything for the first pass on the baritone is ready or on its way. i got a stainless steel version of the tailpiece which should be better for the added string tension. i decided to make it easier and found an unusually low-output Telecaster bridge pickup (3.8kΩ) which should balance better with the JM pickups. i’ll use the Mustang-style bridge that came with the new JM.

i’m still processing the neck, but should be done by the time the tuners come in. it had to be sanded because the finish was Not Good, and once i had it down to 1500 i liked the satin neck feel so much i decided to stop. the board is sanded from the end up to the 14th fret and is coming along.

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