Turning a Jazzmaster Into a Baritone Guitar

I had bought one of the new “Blacktop” Telecasters and converted it to Baritone by stringing it with the 6 heaviest strings of a set of D’Addario Jazz Light Seven Flats. It was easy, I just had to get a fresh stone-encrusted finger nail file and widen the Nut slots a bit. The Telecaster, with its Humbucker pickups was perfect for the new application. The Telecaster as Baritone, has these really nice round and clean tones.

But it was so good, that I wondered what I was to do with my Jazzmaster. The Jazzmaster, as it is, is thin on the high side … I had to adjust up the pickups on the high side, and tweak up the sound system equalization to help out the high notes. Perhaps it would be better to “bulldog” the Jazzmaster too, that is, to turn it into a Baritone Guitar and forget about the High Side by simply eliminating it

When I decided to “Bulldog” the Telecaster, I had ordered the D’Addario Jazz Light Seven Flats from two different venders, on the chance that I’d get one set sooner than later. You see, I play violin and bass too, where the strings are relatively expensive, and so the cost of guitar strings seems like nothing in comparison. Anyway, the second set of D’Addario Sevens came in today. It made me think of putting them to use.

I looked over the Jazzmaster. Convertering it to Baritone would be a bigger job than the Telecaster. Not only would I have to widen the Nut slots, but there was the Bridge Slots to deal with. And the Bridge was made of medal.

But when I cut off the old strings and just removed the Bridge simply by lifting it off the keeper pegs, I saw that the Bridge Slots were not even differentiated – they are all just the same size little “Vees”, that the strings could settle into – one size fits all. Well, that seems to be why the Jazzmasters have their famous Problem, that vigorous picking or even finger plucking, knocks the strings off their bridge seats – the bridge slots are too narrow, and ‘V’ shaped – the strings just slip up the slant with the least little sideways force.

Converting the Jazzmaster to Baritone would ‘kill two birds with one stone’; I could lower the range more into its natural bandwidth (it likes Low Notes better than High Notes), and I could work the Bridge so that it could hold the strings better.

I had to think through the process. I could use a Dremel Tool for widening the Bridge Slots, but the problem with Power Tools is that, while they are faster, they also make irreparable mistakes very quickly. So I decided to use hand tools. I found an old hack saw blade. Hack saws are made for cutting metal. The particular blade I found was something of a compromise. It would make the slots a bit too wide for the little strings, but not wide enough for the fat strings, particularly the .65 B String that would be the new Low String.

I hacksawed the existing “Vees” down so that they now had square corners. The Strings could now settle into slots. It would be much more difficult to knock a string off the Bridge now. The hacksaw might have left some rough edges, and so I got Sandpaper and folded it and ran the sand paper into the groves. For the wider slots, I folded the sandpaper around an old fingernail file. I used sandpaper from 80 grade to 220 grade. The metal had to be smooth, or the strings might be damaged. I’m an old man and so I used a jewelers loupe to see with magnification, to make sure the sizing and the smoothness was just right, but younger people would probably just ‘eyeball’ the whole process.

After having done the Telecaster Nut, the Jazzmaster Nut was easy. I finished by using a thin stick and a Carpenter’s Pencil to rub some of the graphite powder ( a very good dry lubricant) into the Nut Slots, to make tuning easier.

The skinny strings had a bit of side to side play in the Bridge Grooves, but no problem manifested while playing. Just as I expected, by squaring the Bridge Slot edges and deepening the grooves, there was no longer a problem with knocking the strings off the bridge.

How did the Jazzmaster work as a Baritone?

Now the Telecaster, converted to “Bulldog”, was superb – nice clean round tones from low to high… what was left of high, which seemed to be plenty. So I did side by side comparisons with the Telecaster Baritone and the Jazzmaster Baritone. The Jazzmaster was a bit less ‘round’ but equalization could fix that. But the Jazzmaster does have the Tailed Bridge which makes those pretty, though somewhat unpredictable, flared notes (which is why Jazz Players seem to prefer Tailed Bridges). The both of them were so good – the Telecaster with the Humbucker Pickups, and the Jazzmaster with the shallow single sided pickups and Tailed Bridge, that there really was no choosing… not, on the basis of performance. I finally decided to make the Jazzmaster the Practice Workhorse because it had the Rosewood Neck, which doesn’t stain from hours of sweat and skin oils. Also, the Jazzmaster I have has those Dual Controls… you can set up for both Lead Guitar and Rhythm and switch back and forth. I rarely use it, except for when I play Deep Purple’s “Woman From Tokyo” which is hard-driving Rock except for a very pretty middle part… with the dual controls I can go from “Hard Driving Rock” to “Pretty” at the flip of a switch.

But, yes, both guitars are extremely better as Baritones.

Oh, when I used to play normal guitars, I tuned to E A D G C F instead of E A D G B E (it keeps the string intervals at Perfect Fourths, while the B E tuning, to bring those strings down a step, it only helps with chording for people with short fingers. Who know where that tradition starte?). With the Baritone ‘Bulldogs’ I keep the Perfect Fourth tuning – B E A D G C. But traditionalist Guitar Players, with short fingers who want to keep doing their old chords, well, they could tune to B E A D F# B… you would just have to transpose a little to get the exact chords you want, but the neck would still be the same…except for being a Perfect Fourth lower.

If in doubt about String Tension, consult the D’Addario String Tension Chart on their Website, or just do a Web Search for D’Addario String Tension Chart.