New here... Jaguar tele mix

[heatdev]

Hello folks,

I'm a lefty, and I had my two favorite guitars stolen some years ago. I now realize I can't afford to replace either of them. So I thought I'd make the best of both worlds into one.

I was originally thinking of a tele body, with a 65 Jaguar neck. With the rear contours of the Jaguar. All on the scale of a Jaguar. Then I started hearing about intonation issues. Playability. Then I looked at warmouth guitars, and got even more confused. I don't really have money to waste. I'm willing to commit, if this is a real possibility. Have a jazzcaster over there, just surely cool, but not the right scale. I'd like to hear from people who have more knowledge and experience than I do. A friend is telling me to just go out and buy the affinity telling tele. But that's not it. But for the money, is it close enough? 8 don't think so. Thoughts please!

Alex

[marqueemoon]

Hello folks,

I'm a lefty, and I had my two favorite guitars stolen some years ago. I now realize I can't afford to replace either of them. So I thought I'd make the best of both worlds into one.

I was originally thinking of a tele body, with a 65 Jaguar neck. With the rear contours of the Jaguar. All on the scale of a Jaguar. Then I started hearing about intonation issues. Playability. Then I looked at warmouth guitars, and got even more confused. I don't really have money to waste. I'm willing to commit, if this is a real possibility. Have a jazzcaster over there, just surely cool, but not the right scale. I'd like to hear from people who have more knowledge and experience than I do. A friend is telling me to just go out and buy the affinity telling tele. But that's not it. But for the money, is it close enough? 8 don't think so. Thoughts please!

Alex

A lefty Telemaster body with a lefty 24 3/4” conversion neck, Tele bridge, and Jag neck pickup would be one approach that wouldn’t require a lot of customization.

[shigginpit]

Sorry to hear about your guitars, hope you find something nice to replace them!

[Embenny]

I'm not quite clear on this - do you have a '65 Jaguar neck you're hoping to use?

A Jaguar neck heel will fit in a Tele neck heel rout, just with gaps at the square corners that could be covered by an appropriately-route pickguard.

But the scale lengths doesn't match a standard Tele body, so you'd need something a little customized.

However, not as customized as you'd imagine. If you get a Tele body without bridge holes routed, you could easily mount a top-loader type bridge in just the right spot. It's easy to do the math and measure out the distance, as long as you're confident with your alignment skills (or get a tech to install it who is).

Alternatively, like marqueemoon said, a 24.75" conversion neck will drop onto any standard Tele body. 24.75" is Gibson scale length, but it's also exactly halfway in between a Tele (25.5") and Jaguar (24"), so that might be the ideal "hybrid" arrangement.

Personally, to complete the hybrid concept, I'd go with a Jaguar neck pickup and a Tele bridge pickup. Best of both worlds. I like Jaguar neck pickups more than Tele neck pickups, and the reverse for the bridge, but maybe you've got other thoughts on the matter.

You could also get a custom body built like you're describing. Some builders like Guitarform (Deed_Poll on OSG) do customized shapes like that, so a Tele body with a belly cut and/or forearm contour (the two comfort cuts on a Jag) routed with the bridge placement matching a 24" Jaguar neck would probably be right up his alley. I'd ask for the Jaguar neck pickup and a pickguard made to match all that, but that's just me.

So you do have plenty of options if you want to make this build happen.