ShortScale.org

Last week I was in Tokyo for work, and caught a train heading north to visit the Electric Deer Workshop which some of you may know from Offset and Reverb. My mind was blown by the boutique, historic and beautiful-sounding gear - sleeper tube amps from Teisco in the 60s, Royal Super Bunny artillery-grade lead and bass amps, Voice, Mory, Guyatone ... even the last-ever Voice amp customised by Saito himself to my host's request - after a series of interviews preserving his story, amid the muddy history of Japanese guitar making from the big companies down to the individuals winding pickups in their kitchens.

Being the guy he is, Mr Electric Deer had even saved me a bit of a lost cause guitar: a pretty 70s offset from the era when Kawai were buying up parts stock from Teisco and others, slapping them together into instruments and throwing them out the door. This Concert is going to stretch my limited skills but it'll be worth it I hope. Not least because it seems to me, that they invented the Jag-Stang back in 1971:



So far I've used the aluminium foil trick to polish the chrome parts - for those of you who haven't seen it, crumple a small wad of aluminium foil and wet it with a little water. It will scrub corrosion away with the greatest of ease and leave the chrome polished, and can't scratch it either. Apparently the scrubbing exposes fresh aluminium which the water oxidises, forming the finest Al2O3 polishing grit.




Next: the bridge, which is hanging the strings up around 6mm above the fretboard despite a hefty shim. I have a tune-o-matic / ABR bridge from the Jag I bought last year, I think a solution is forming.

I mean, it's definitely a Jazzmaster derivative, but I love it all the same

It actually reminds me of a Jaguar.

Are those two switches for the two pickups?

I think it's really cool.

I can’t find it but there was an old a Jaguar ad of some shady types measuring a Jaguar with the headline, “The world’s most copied guitar.” I guess this is what they were talking about.

They are pickup switches, yeah. The square pole pickups are old Teisco stock as I understand it. The scale length is half way between Jag and JM, but no rhythm circuit of course. I'm gonna call it the first Jag-Stang and fight anyone who disagrees.

taylornutt wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 6:31 pmAre those two switches for the two pickups?

Nah, they turn the lights on and off

It’s probably for the garbage disposal that got ripped out to make room for a Kahler in the early ‘80s. Or the rotating leopard print waterbed it had as standard.

if you flip it, Tom Morello is temporarily unable to speak

Good work, everybody; pizza party on me

Be there in 20