| 2018 EVH Tribute Jazzmaster Remake Build |
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So in 1997, I got into a band called Loverboy, and their guitarist Paul Dean, while researching what he was using to record those records, had revealed building a guitar at home was possible. To add to it, I'd gotten into Van-Halen toward the end of 1998, and Edward Van-Halen was a better known example of someone putting together their own guitars.
So around November 1998, I built a Fender Jazzmaster copy body routed for a single humbucker and a Stratocaster tremolo unit, made a few mistakes, and put it together with 2 single coils in series for a Humbucker (from a Harmony H80T Strat), and a Kahler/Gibson 2300 vibrato unit. The neck was also from a Harmony H80T Strat copy as well. Later, that body would be destroyed and lost, along with a lot of other tidbits of my early days, to the sands of time. Ultimatley, in the end, the guitar was put to bed, then 2020 came. I think in the span of 2 years, I saw two of my biggest influences pass on - Ric Ocasek, who was the reason I wanted a Jazzmaster in the first place, and Edward Van-Halen, which from various things he put out there and actually quanitfied why (and were not him hiding how he got his sound by lying - before the 90's, usually a guitarist's tone was a sacred hidden thing that they'd try to throw you off of). Generally, my rule of thumb, is if I copy someone else's guitar, I'm going to make sosme changes to it to make it my own in some way.2020 Build 
I started with some scrap wood I found in a field near my apartment that was remnants of fenceposts being torn down to make way for more expansion of the other complex next door. I took this wood home, sawed it into 5 pieces, and then glued them together to make a body blank, I did not do very much planning to it, but it still turned out pretty good. This guitar differs from the original as the original was Southern Yellow Pine, this one is Cedar, at least in part. All the pieces were glued together with Titebond II and clamped with 3 wide clamps. I think I let them dry for around a week before bothering to even touch them. Either way, exciting to "reincarnate" a former project.
Now, I decided this time to use my Fender Jaguar as a template for the body shape, as I wanted the more pronounced and pointy shape of the Jaguar over the slighly less as pointy "Jazzmaster", and I wanted it to look a little different. The body was traced directly from my 98' CIJ 62' Reissue Jaguar to the wood, I did not use a template. I just used the guitar straight up to copy - a whole heck of a lot better than the 2 hours I spent defacing a guitar book to upscale a Jazzmaster body on the first try back in high school (and result with a warped, oversized, and out of proportion shape like I had in high school). I think I spent 2-3 days after work off/on sanding the body, filling in gaps, and justt generally, prepping it for finishing. All filling work was done with Elmer's wood filler, and then sanded smooth. The entire body was sanded up to 320 grit, and then I started to lay the finish the following weekend.  Routing was done next. The pickup I selected for this is a broken old Lawrence XL500, 8.5K Ohm Ceramic Blade humbucker - a bit of a nod to Dimebag Darrell who was buried with the original Bumblebee. Neck pocket was cut - I copied the shallow layout from my Hondo Paul Dean II, and the pickup screws into the wood in a unique way - through ththe back of the body, Danelectro style, so it has VERY good coupling. The Finish is Rustoleum Colorfast Paint/Primer 2'in'1 in Yellow for the base coat, with the black being a cheap, $5 can of cheapie black from Lowes. No clearcoat, I wanted that sort of "assembled in a teenage bedroom" effect Ed's early guitars had on this. Finishing the body took an entire week, and I had to hang it outside in the shed for about 72 hours at least to allow the paint to cure - bringing it in later on in the dring process, and hanging it on the shelving in the "Lab" closet. 
After the body was painted, the neck was painted. The neck is a very old Warmoth EVH profile strat neck with a Pre-CBS headstock on it I got on a partscaster I bought in Montgomery 20-ish years ago, and it was striipped down by me shortly after I got ito. All I did was copied the paintjob to the headstock. It got effed up, but I kept it that way because my wife said it added to the "character". A Dymo thermal label was applied to the headstock with the guitar's model "CreepingNet Panther LS VHII". All the hardware the neck originally had (Schaller tuners, Floyd Rose Locking Nut, bar string guide) were reused. This neck was also used due to it's low action. 
Eye-Bolts were added for a future EVH-correct Shoulder Strap setup. The Kahler was installed with 2 Lag Bolts and 2 long wood screws. The way I did it this time allowed me to angle the bridge, which gives more bar travel, fixes the tone/sustain issues the Kahler is notorious for, and uses it the way it was intended on a Gibson solidbody (like a Les Paul, which has a curved top). I can shim the bottom of the "bridge" part of the Kahler in front to raise the bridge up using washers. There may come a time where I'll deepen the neck pocket and recess the back of the Kahler into the body to "sleeken" the setup a bit.
There may come a time later where I'll put a much better pickup in it of some kind, around 12K, Ceramic, closer to a Duncan Distortion or a Duncan Custom. But the Lawrence does a really fine job on it's own, really gets into that Van-Halen II era character a surpising bit with the right Amp Modeling sequence, and through my Bugera nails the Brown Sound pretty darn well - surprising since the components are not the same ballpark as any of EVH's stuff save for maybe the neck. 
In late 2022 I did some upgrades. First off, I found a problem with the Lawrence pickup in it having a bad wiring problem UNDER the epoxy, so that pickup was scrapped, and now there's a B.C. Rich Bronze Series Warlock pickup in the bridge, which gives it a way more apropriate sound. Also, the volume knob was swapped for a chrome dome one. |
After the glue dried, I had to fill in the gaps in the body, because we did not plane the sides of the boards flat. This was done using scraps from other guitar bodies I had been building in my shed/workshop. I had a lot of little tiny wedge pieces and curly bits of wood from the planer to use for "filler". This is how I did it on the original, but this time, I was going to make those glue lines invisible.
The pickup is 4 conductor, so it was rewired as 2 conductor and had some 1.5" wood screws (flat-top, philips, recessed) set into the back to hold the humbucker in using the screrw holes originally intended for the surround/mounting tabs that broke off (that whole piece was removed revealing it's beben epoxy potted). This was sent to a 500K volume audio taper pot with a Treble Bypass code 102 capacitor on it, and then sent to the output jack via a very very long wiring channel drilled with a "aircraft" bit. The origina was routed with a Dremel and had a very thin wire-sized cavity along the back for the wire, this one removes a lot of the mess of the back, and looks a lot nicer. The pot is left exposed in back.