Musikraft Jazzmaster body?

[painted wood]

beautiful, thank you



thanks for the help.

[Stereordinary]

Wow, that's pretty!

[theworkoffire]

Looks great. And half the weight of mine!

If one of the silly points is the squaring off at the back of the trem cavity that always has to be done by hand anyway, unless you want prohibitively expensive machining costs, so you might as well do it yourself. I've got a special corner chisel to do it but two seconds with any old wood chisel or even a stanley knife will do fine - do the back first, then the sides, otherwise you run the risk of splitting along the grain.

[mcjt]

Hey!
Well, PERSONALLY i am not going to adjust any routs, but i was going to pass on stuff like that to Mkraft so they know what to watch for. Maybe they want it to be as close as possible, but maybe not. If it's functional, who cares if it's not perfectly identical underneath the tremolo unit? The main thing is the contours, making sure an AVRI or vintage guard will fit, as well as dropping in vintage or aftermarket electronics. you would be surprised how tricky it can be...

[theworkoffire]

Without the back corners of the trem rout squared off you won't be able to mount the trem properly - it will go in too far forwards and the lock button won't work, and/or it will rub against the wood at the back and not give a smooth action - nobody squares them off for fun!

[mcjt]

AH!
"No-one does it for fun". Truer words have not been spoken.
I'll see tonight what success i have with getting the tremolo in. As i recall, the dimensions of the rout are spot on, but if those corners need perfectly square corners- ouch

[theworkoffire]

As far as I know Fender always used to do it by hand (since routers can't cut square holes) - Doug's 'Old Yeller' is a particularly wonky example: http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/vie ... 38#p129538

I think most of the time it's done well so you can't really tell it's not part of the main routing process.

[theworkoffire]

Funnily enough on that one they're selling on ebay they're using an aftermarket trem without the lock...

[mcjt]

hey-
shit, you're right! i have two tremolos, and they will fit into the cavity, but not with the tremlock button extended.
not so much funny that they have a non-Fender tailpiece- they don't know there's a problem.
i'll let Musikraft know.
thanks for your help! that was a very fine, meticulous piece of info!

[theworkoffire]

I only look out for it because I had to do it on the Buick... 

[jetset]

I had this exact same issue on the USA Custom Jag body I got: http://www.thejennifers.com/jag/jag3.html  I used a thin round file to sharpen the inner rear edges by hand.

[mcjt]

thanks for the tip, guys! i used my block sander with a 120 grade s-paper to create 90 degree corners.
the tremlock works great now!

[GUITARmole]

Yeah, thanks for the info!  I didn't realize (as USACG, Musikraft, Guitarmill, etc probably don't either) that the squaring of the trem rout wasn't just cosmetic.  I'll definitely get out the chisel and square it off before I paint next week.

[mcjt]

Chisel? that's a little difficult to control.... try a file or a sanding block.

[GUITARmole]

Chisel? that's a little difficult to control.... try a file or a sanding block.

What are chisels used for then?    A sharp chisel makes a nice clean cut...don't ask me how I know this