So, in quite typical fashion I’ve forgotten exactly what I did 10 years ago... either a sign of age or generally using up the available space up top. I’ve started to do some digging and some project planning. I’ve stripped off the remaining hardware to have a look at the body below and remembered some of the tweaks I did before.
Having removed both of the mounting rings and the odd tremolo bridge, I’ve revealed the previous body work repairs. This included the big infil to the control cavity, which was clear with the rings and scratchplate on, an infil of the original bridge position and it looks like I relocated that nasty tremolo to align it to the centre of the guitar properly.
That kind of signifies the quality of the original!
I had also filled a number of the original holes for the bridge and scratch plate with a 2 pack car filler. I vaguely recall drilling the thimble holes for the Jaguar bridge. One of those holes went astray and to be honest, the one I left is a bit wonk so that’s to be plugged with timber and redrilled.
Also, I’ve refreshed myself on what the techy mounting rings do. The two switches on each ring allow the two halves of the humbucker to run in series or parallel. You can also coil tap on either side of the humbucker, which makes 4 settings per humbucker, especially if you have a humbucker that comprises two single coils of different character.
https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/product-news/triple-shot-rings-or-how-the-heck-did-that-sound-emerge-from-my-guitar
On to the planning.
Most sane persons would break this body up into small parts and use it for firewood. However, this was my first guitar, I’ve had it for 25 years and I like the challenge that this represents!
Frankly, the routing is embarrassing and even though it is never to be seen they need to be tidied up!! I shall make up a humbucker template and square up that cavity and also run a straight edge along the selector routing to tidy that up.
I‘m going to fill and redrill the thimble and then get a few of the discrepancies in the finish face filled and prepped for the remaining cavities and new holes.
That dodgy tremolo is being swapped in favour of a full Mustang tremolo unit to accompany the bridge and that top curve on the scratch plate. The tremolo requires a couple of deep diagonal routs for the springs, which shouldn‘t be too tricky.
I‘ve transfered the plate to the cad plan for the scratch plate which in due course will allow me to centre all of the holes correctly and set everything perfectly on the centre lines.
Now, I can’t pretend I’m not a Fender fan boy, especially the offset body guitars. I have other guitars in the offset family and would love a vintage Mustang should funds ever permit. The Givson is adopting a fair number of Fender parts and design traits so it has made me wonder if it should be rechristened!?
Givson is obvious copyright baiting, but it made me wonder if it should be renamed the Givson Misstang, Mushtang, Musting or Stanger... got some time before I do the headstock logo!
So as a self confessed offset fanboy, here’s a Jazzmaster with a turquoise / tortoise shell combination... one very possible colour combo for Sh!t-stang!
