It's Here! '58 Jazzmaster... YAY!

[fullerplast]

And it's a good one.

First impressions:

I'm very pleased with the case. It's a 64 - 65 No Logo black tolex job. It has some stickers and residue, but the tolex is farily nice. There's a few punctures in the tolex, but nothing too bad. The leather ends have some wear, but again, not bad. The hinges are present, functional, and not rusty. The handle is good. The latches spring open coorectly. I open it up...

Right away, I LIKE IT! It's a bit too yellow for my taste, I like my blondes yellowed... but not quite this much. The grain is very prominent and I think it might be ash. I notice the pickguard. It was advertised as reissue, and it IS incorrect (tortoise instead of gold anodized)... but it's NOT reissue! It's a pre-CBS tortoise/green guard! Bonus! I pick it up, it's a bit heavy.... maybe it's not ash. I check the neck plate. The plate looks legit. The number is correct for '58... 32024. I check the tuners. The cases are a bit rusty, but they're single line Klusons, no problem there. I flip it over, and the decal is nearly PERFECT! Now back to the body, the switch tip is amber and obviously NOT a reissue.  The bridge is a Mustang reissue, I knew that when I bought it. The tail is PAT PEND and in very nice shape. The chrome is good. Some hardware is missing from the pickguard, I can see the aluminum shield underneath, another bonus. The pickups and knobs look correct.

Now back to the case... the interior is very nice and there's no offensive odor. I open the compartment to find the original bridge (missing one saddle) and the TREM ARM! Yay! I was not expecting it.

I turn on the light and sit down with it. The guard has very tiny holes at each corner of the pickup cutouts. Maybe they were mount holes for humbucker rings? In the auction, the seller indicated that the pup routes were once deepened, but then repaired. So that may explain the holes, though I assumed the original gold guard had been victimized for the HBs. I examine the logo. It has been oversprayed with clear. Thats why it looks so good, I guess. It isn't a terrible job. The back of the neck has a few chips in the added clearcoat as well, but no graying or sign of wear. The frets are low and flat (you were right, Frank). The strings were loosened for shipment, so I can't check it right now. I consider tuning it, but then figure I'm gonna put my gold guard on it and I also want to look inside, so I don't tune. I do take it into my room and plug it in, though. After tha amp warms up, I do the "tap test". All systems are go, neck, both, bridge... and rhythm circuit.

Next I place it on a stand and take photos:









Now pardon me whilst I take a peek inside...  (to be continued)

[burker]

niiiice........

thats a really beautiful guitar, I can only imagine how great it mustve looked back when it had a gold guard (though vintage tortoiseshell is looks awesome aswell!)

[Soiouz]

I think you made an incredible deal on that one!!! What an amazing guitar!  I can't wait to see it with the gold guard on!

[chrisjedijane]

that's really beautiful, the gold guard will be great

I wish I had enough money to buy myself a nice vintage JM!

[dinosaur]

Looks fantastic! Congratulations.

[burker]

so wait, are you putting a gold gaurd on it, if so.will the tort one be for sale?

[fullerplast]

Here's the prognosis:

It isn't as good as I hoped... BUT, it isn't bad enough to make me not like it.

I removed the strings from the pegs. They looked and felt new, so I trimmed the miles of excess off and set them aside. Then I removed the screws form the pickguard. I noticed that out of  the 13 holes on the guard, some were added. The reason is the difference in routing of the 58-59 bodies, there's nothing to attach two scews to, so some rocket scientist added more. I lifted the guard and discovered yet more holes, This thing has had a few configurations in the past 48 years! I noticed the shielding has been tampered with, to make room for the humbuckers, I guess. The part where the main tub folds over onto the two small sections under the pickups had been cut. Then they re-connected them with a pieced of wire soldered to both ends. One of the string grounds from the bridge cups to the shielding was missing, the other one was broken. The rhythm circuit cavity shielding was missing, and in it's place, the cavity was lined with electrical tape! (?) I peeled the tape away, and was happy to discover the brass tub was indeed present, it had been lined with tape. I started to remove the electrical components from the guard. Right away, I encountered the famous "pickguard screw in the rhythm control screw hole". And then the ever-present incorrect screws on the slide switch, with little nuts on the back side. I removed the toggle (incorrect round knurled nut instead of hex), the knobs (correct three spoke), the pots, and the jack. The jack was missing the star washer, no biggie. Now on to the pickups. Of the eight screws, three were missing and two were completely stripped. I removed them, using needlenose pliers on the two stripped ones. I noticed the neck pickup ground wire had been cut and spliced at some time, the splice covered in tape. I lifted the pickups and the brass shielding and saw that the pickup routs that "had been deepened", were not repaired very professionally. They were not just deepened, the neck pickup rout was enlarged slightly at the top.

I'm making this sound worse than it is. I have all the correct hardware, some original cloth wiring, and a small bit of knowledge to correct all these things. well.. except maybe the routs. So I'm mildly disppointed, but not too much.

I mount the pickups with eight good screws, and start to mount the electronics to the gold guard. Everything is fine, except I have mount the rhythm toggle using the nuts, the screw holes had been stripped and drilled out. I have a few of these switches, so I'm not too bummed. I get everything mounted (with all correct hardware) and then set the guard in place... only to find that the pickup holes need to be enlarged slightly. A few people had told me about this, and I pleasantly forgot. It's a Scotland reproduction guard, and is nice... but not perfect.

While performing the above actions, I was happily sipping on Margaritas. Nida is making Mexican tonight! 

So I've decided that it would not be prudent to file the guard while under the influence. So sadly, I am dead-in-the-water for this evening. But here are the pics so far:


















I really like the '58 and feel pleased and honored to have it. I really wanted to get the guard on, so I could gaze and admire it. But I might as well wait and do it right. With a fresh start, I can replace the switch, fix the spliced lead, repair the string grounds, replace the busted saddle on the original bridge, and enlarge the pickup openings in the guard. It's better to do it once than have to go back in. The fixes on the routes can wait until I refinish it.... should I decide to. This ends the story for tonight. I think I'll mix up another Margarita!

Oh... and yes, burker, the guard (and shield) will be for sale.  PM for details.

[Vinkie]

Congratulations Fullerplast! It seems like an overall nice guitar to me, some altered stuff under the plate but luckily the right PU's etc. I really love the yellow natural colour actually, it could be my monitor but it almost seems to have a sorta golden hue. The gold anodised plate looks quite striking on this one! The body looks like ash to me too btw.

Enjoy your Margaritas hombre, I bring a toast to your '58 from here with a nice cool beer or two...three...whatever 

[Maggieo]

I am reduced to just poting Droolies.

[fullerplast]

Thanks All!

[i love sharin foo]

It's going to look great when you get the gold guard all fitted up for it! The quality of the finish looks pretty good in the photos. It looks a LOT like the LE MIJ models. Do you have any idea of what color you would refinish to if you do go ahead and do it later on?

Justin

[fullerplast]

If I can discover what the original color was, I'd like to put it back. I didn't pull the neck tonight, but in the ebay auction the pocket was white. Who knows?  If it's ash, I'll keep it blonde. I'll have to strip a small area under the shielding to find out.

The current finish is nice! And old! It has a few dings, but I like it that way. It was a pretty good job, whoever did it.

Hehe.. I was thinking about the similarity to the LE JMs too! They were the same yellowish shade with bluish woodgrain. 

[daydreamdelay]

WOW! i do not wish to stand up right now.. give me a minute   



congrats and enjoy your new JM, you deserve it 

[flatfiver]

Mmm... margaritas... 

I mean... Doug!  Your guitar is lovely!

Bienvenidos al mundo de "Jazzmaster" (again  ).

[fullerplast]

I've been at it all morning. I like it more now than last night. I have everything straightened out "under the hood".

The first thing I did was address the bridge ground issue. Prior to '62, the brisge, strings, and tail were grounded by a piece of guitar string (really!) running from the bridge thimble to the pickup cavity brass shielding. Mine was broken. The best way to remove those tight cups without chewing them all up is to heat them up with a soldering iron. I just stand the iron up in the hole and wait. Obviously you don't want to let it sit in there too long, you don't want the finish to burn or melt (if you smell it... STOP).  Periodically remove the iron and grip the thimble tightly and try to rotate it. Don't slip and chaw marks on the cup. If it turns, then gently rotate back and forth and pull up. If they don't turn, heat it up some more. Mine came out quite easily after a few minutes of heat.

I cut a length of 010. string, bent an end into a little L-shape and stuffed it into the hole, then pressed the cups back in. The other end I soldered to the brass shielding. I had to scuff and sand the shielding to clean up a spot for the solder to stick. On the end closer to the control cavity, I made a slight deviation from original, due to the tub being "modified" and not touching brass to brass. I continued on with the guitar string and soldered it to the main control cavity also. Now a ground circuit is in place to shield the pickup and the bridge.

Next I addressed the rhythm switch. I found that the mount holes had not been drilled out (as I previously thought), but the switch had been replaced with an incorrect type. Using my spare '59 harness as donor, I replaced the switch with a functional era-correct part. Gloria and Mell would have been proud. (I felt bad cutting that switch out of the other circuit, but decided it deserved to be on a functional JM... I felt worse having an incorrect switch in my circuit).

I moved on to the spliced black lead on the neck pickup. This was the result of stupidity. They had installed the pickup 180 out, and lengthened the lead to reach the blob of solder on the shield. I cut it off, rotated the pickup, and reconnected the lead to ground with no splice.

Using my mulimeter on the ohms setting, I checked for continuity between various points. Everything is connected and with little resistance in the circuit. I dropped the bridge into the thimbles, placed a meter lead on the plate and the other lead on the rhythm control tub (the farthest point apart) and measured. Again there was continuity with little resistance, like .4 or something. The circuit is fixed and all the problems (except for the rout) have been corrected.

Now for the filing of the guard....