ilovefuzz.com

if you save searches on eBay and Reverb another one will probably show up. it seems like selling Fender/Squier guitars parted out is more or less as remunerative as trying to sell them intact as used/seconds.

Robotalk for $100--

https://www.ebay.com/itm/187708081916?_ ... &recoPos=5

i was poking around on eBay looking at guitar parts when this rather intriguing gadget showed up. it’s an adapter that replaces the Jazzmaster-style tremolo with an elongated hardtail plate that extends the behind-the-bridge string length, lets you tune them, and incorporates a mount for a Telecaster pickup. that wouldn’t be my first choice for this application, but i reckon there’s ways to work around that. i hesitate to get myself into yet another project, but my friend says he has two offset bodies i can have. it’s not really practical for most kinds of music, but combined with an open tuning or DADGAD this seems like something i could get lost with looping for days on end. not to mention the feedback potential. and it’s not that expensive considering. yow! am i Fred Frith yet?

parenthetically, i would really like to hear the Jazzmaster in the second photo with this installed and the aluminum neck. yow! am i Glenn Branca yet?


https://ebay.us/m/uWL5ca

i’ll bet one of the Guyatone single-coils with the metal shell, white top, and big pole screws like i used on the Kondor would be tits for that application. and i just happen to have a spare in the parts box…i wonder how that would balance with WRHBs. occasionally a hotter example shows up that’s more like 6kΩ than the typical 2.6-3.0kΩ which would perhaps be better but might lose some of the tinkle that makes them so nice.

christ, i didn’t need another project.

The more steeply cantered Tele bridge pickup is kind of an odd choice given that the canter on the Tele only happened to reuse an existing lap steel pickup design without having to redesign it for a narrower string spacing. I’m assuming we’re narrowing again at this tailpiece so that a more conventional pole-spaced pickup might work straight or cantered.

I remember a builder was doing whole instruments with the tuned behind-the-bridge thing happening but can’t recall the name. I know I first saw it on ILF.

it may be that pickups don’t fit well in the tremolo rout, which IIRC is ~4” square, without that degree of tilt. i’m not at home or i’d check if a Strat pickup, Guyatone, or P-90 would fit. i bet it’d be possible to adapt the plate to something else, or alternately have a pickup wound to that size in some other design.

Yeah, they're meant to be an easy drop in solution. The guy has been prototyping versions for a while and posting over on reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/offset/comment ... ge_tuning/

I stuck one on my jag, but haven't got around to drilling a hole through to the trem cavity yet to wire a pickup.

That's pretty cool. I had an old Harmony where I moved the tailpiece string break point to the end of the guitar and got some low rent Hans Reichel type things out of it, don't even really need the pickup on the wrong side to get weird stuff out of the normal side.

a couple examples:

https://youtu.be/Hl-LoIa5c8U?si=Wqq8WC__75Em96WK

https://youtu.be/Y3VrMQMwXRE?si=lTemK7XbT-H9H0w9

shouldn’t there be a pre-existing hole drilled between the tremolo rout and the control cavity for a ground wire?

that second clip is something like the sound i’m envisioning. looping that and the bouzouki together could be awesome.

dubkitty wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 9:06 am shouldn’t there be a pre-existing hole drilled between the tremolo rout and the control cavity for a ground wire?

That’s the old practice (and I’m guessing gets a more reliable ground). I imagine some more recent offsets are using the thimbles or the threads for the tuneomatic posts for string ground. On a factory production level a shorter hole should be faster and a shorter length of wire is cheaper.

they drilled to the tremolo rout on the GFS Galaxiemaster body, so i’m surprised Fender wouldn’t.

It’s a squier vintage modified jaguar.
(Also that’s a neck JB from the bridge position of the Ed O’Brian strat if anyone is wondering)

If you’re gonna futz with the wiring on that guy to install the behind-the-bridge pickup, I will say that full sized JBs like series/parallel switching, so likely the single sized, too; put it on a pull-switch for a less humbucker-y sound in that spot if you’re feeling limited by that choice.

it suddenly struck me what the ideal application would be for this thing: BARITONE. the behind strings would be lower in pitch and thus more useable. i’m also thinking it would be interesting to play with the behind pickup on and letting it just pick up weird overtones without picking the short strings. i would hate to give up the tremolo, though.