Jazzcaster

Our comfort contours are generally a little deeper in the arm and a little shallower in the belly than most vintage contours (though size, shape and depth of vintage contours varies widely in different years of manufacture and even from instrument to instrument in the same year of manufacture).

We have worked hard to achieve organic, melty contours that don’t exhibit a prominent edge / line where they meet the flat surface of the body – and we pay as much attention to how they combine and sculpt the edge of the body as we do to the graphic they impart on the faces.

Whilst their smoothness makes them more subtle in appearance than some contours, we really bring out their beauty by maximising the surface area – which is to say that their presence is physically larger on the face and back of the guitar. In many cases, our contours measure more than twice the area of our competitors’!

The result is a coherent form and character which perfectly complements the curves of the model silhouette – a smooth, sculptural quality that you can enjoy in unparalleled playing comfort.

Electrosocket jack output route is optional on all models – any knob hole can be used instead to top-mount a standard jack, though we always recommend using large washers wherever top-mount jacks are mounted directly to a rear-routed guitar.

Contrary to popular belief, Electrosockets are compatible with angled jack plugs, and these work great to tidy the cable away over your strap button.

An angled neck pocket allows increased break angle over the bridge – a necessity when using modern string gauges, and the main culprit for buzzing and string skipping issues. Even the much maligned Vintage-style bridges can function quite happily with the correct angle and slightly heavier strings.

It is beneficial to increase the break angle at the neck-end before the tail-end; the reason being that if all the angle is behind the bridge, due to the way it ‘floats’, this will force the bridge forward and cause problems returning to pitch. It is also the case that there are more hazards to the string behind the bridge than in front – for instance, the chance of the string fouling against the back edge of the bridge plate, intonation adjustment screw heads, or against the mounting screws on the plate.

To a large extent, this is why common “solutions” to the break angle problem like the BuzzStop or moving the vibrato unit closer to the bridge can cause more problems than they solve. As such, it is preferable to introduce as much angle as possible at the neck-end before worrying about what’s going on behind.

Alongside the standard options of Modern or Vintage T bridge, we can also route for Offset Bridge Thimbles to be combined with your choice of behind-bridge vibrato.

This is an extremely popular option on our Jazzcaster and Customaster models in particular.

We recommend selecting an angled neck pocket if this is your choice, regardless of whether you desire an S-Style or T-Style pocket. Our routes for the Offset Bridge plate are modelled after the AllParts unit.