I discovered at an early age that electric guitars can be taken apart. Over its short and brutal life, my first electric guitar, a sunburst Les Paul copy from the Sears catalog, suffered all manner of disassembly, reassembly, experimentation, and ultimately, destruction. In fact, in its final configuration that poor guitar consisted solely of a neck joined to a splintered, hewn-down scrap of wood slathered in white boat paint. I had also nailed a DiMarzio Super Distortion II pickup to the wood and had emblazoned "Zerstörung!" (that's German for destruction) in red model paint where the pickguard should have been.
Ever since that time, I have owned very few guitars that I've left alone - only my beloved Goya strat copy, a vintage Mosrite Ventures model, and a vintage Fender Mustang have I left stock. It's worth noting, I suppose, that I only owned the latter two for a couple months. I've tweaked almost all my guitars, mostly inexpertly. But they do what they need to do and it's all sorts of fun. Since I've been doing a lot of guitar tweaking lately, I thought it would be fun to write about the current stable of mutants.
One night in 1993 I had a dream of a gorgeous vintage pale yellow Fender Jazzmaster that gave me "that sound," and with which, in the dream, I regaled thousands of screaming fans. After that dream I became obsessed with Jazzmasters. Fast forward to 2010 and by now I've owned 3 of them. The first was a sunburst Made In Japan (MIJ) Fender '62 reissue which I ended up destroying at a Pie show at Boston University in 1996. The destruction was an accident, at first - I loved that guitar. I ended up replacing that one with another MIJ reissue, this one curiously light & snappy. It would become The Creamsicle Jazzmaster.
The Creamsicle Jazzmaster began life with a white finish and red tortoiseshell pickguard. Not my first choice, but it played so well I had to have it. As far as I know, Fender has never made a Jazzmaster exactly like the one in my dream - pale yellow with a dark brown tortoise-shell pickguard. And I'm not careful & patient enough to have duplicated such a finish myself. When I saw The Flaming Lips play The Rat in Boston in 1996, Wayne played an orange Jazzmaster. Remembering that show, I decided to sand off the white finish and, with orange spray paint, to approximate the radness of Wayne's guitar. I got hold of a white pickguard to complete the look.
And thus The Creamsicle Jazzmaster was born. Somehow, the goopy, toxic spray paint has not ruined the sound of this guitar. The body is made of either a really light alder or maybe basswood. It's the best-feeling guitar I've ever worn - the balance of it. And being light, it has a great snappy sound and instant jang-jang keening response. I put Seymour Duncan "Hot For Jazzmaster" pickups in it, like I always do with Jazzmasters. That's MY pickup, so I can't help it.
The only crummy thing about this guitar is the neck. The first one warped badly, which is why I played a black US-made reissue as my main guitar for quite a while. I replaced that neck with another MIJ neck a couple years ago and guess what.. it just warped again. I can't believe it. Anyway, this lovely guitar is currently taken apart, because its neck is messed up. And the pickups have been donated to my Custom Strat.
From L to R: Squiremaster, Creamsicle Jazzmaster, Custom Eric Johnson Strat (phase 2).
Custom Eric Johnson Strat
This is my main guitar, my best guitar at the moment. I made it for myself after my US-made Jazzmaster was stolen. It's an Eric Johnson alder body with THE BEST GUITAR NECK EVER MADE - a Fender hot rod soft-v vintage strat neck. I bought the body and neck from the Stratosphere on Ebay, then put it together with a custom pickguard from Pickguardian, and various Seymour Duncan pups in a couple different configurations:
Phase 1: Seymour Duncan surf pickups neck regular, no middle, bridge angled.
Phase 2: With the same Seymours, but both angled, as pictured. That was the prettiest look for this guitar. Like a Fender Lead II or Mustang.
Phase 3: Now the Seymour Duncan "hot for Jazzmaster" pickups from the Creamsicle are in the Strat. Well, the bridge pickup is. Seems that in the process of trying to add the SD hot pup to the neck position, I fried it. Oh well. Instead I added the US reissue stock neck pup, and it sounds great - a little brighter and bouncier than the hot one.
Here is the Custom Eric Johnson strat today, with Jazzmaster pickups crammed into a mutilated pickguard.
Squiremaster
Right after my black US-made Jazzmaster got ripped off, while I was quite contrite over the circumstances thereof, and just before I'd resolved to put together a really nice guitar, I decided to do what I could with a real cheapo guitar I had that I actually really liked. Just to see if a cheapo guitar could become my main squeeze. Well, the experiment ultimately failed. It's not my main guitar. But it is fun and interesting. After much violent routing and such, I fitted a Jazzmaster bridge and tailpiece/vibrato into a Squier strat. No mean feat. No graceful one either, but if you squint at it, it looks pretty cool. See the first pic above, first on the left.
Because the Squiremaster is so light and because it has a Jazzmaster bridge & tailpiece, it has a really great & unique sound. Here is a Bruises Of Unknown Origin track recorded with this guitar, back when it had a Seymour Duncan twang banger Tele imitation bridge pickup for a strat. Now it has a JB Jr. Anyway, check out screw me to hear it go.
Univox Strat
When he retired, my excellent neighbor John moved to Costa Rica and left me a bunch of guitars. The Squire that became the Squiremaster was one of them, and also a Cameo Mosrite copy bass. But the best was this Univox Strat. It had been seriously modified and damaged before I laid paws on it. The wood was so fried that there was no way to resurrect it with a whammy bar.
Still, it's always been super fun to play and has lots of songs in it. The very first time I plugged it in, the Richard Bitch song Sit In The Sun came flying out of it (that recording features the black US Jazzmaster, though).
I messed with a few different pickups on this one, and it sat around for a couple years taken apart. A couple months ago I started lusting after a Tele, and having a Tele pickup and bridge around, I decided to graft them onto the Univox. So I chopped into a strat pickguard and added some other SD pickups I had, and here we go..
The Univox Strat with tele bridge pickup. Sounds fab.
Cameo Mosrite Copy Bass
Well, here it is. It has a US reissue Jazzmaster bridge guitar pickup in it. With total frankenstein hardware on this thing, I can't quite get the intonation right, but it's really light and fun to play. It's very clean & bright with the Jazm pickup, but still has enough output to make amps bristle. A caveman job for sure, but super fun. Listen to this track by The Bronson to hear it in action: Eskimoes
Yep, so that's the mutilated stable at the moment. I'm sure in a year from now most of them will have different pickups and the Creamsicle will be back in action. Maybe it will even have become my dream guitar by then.
