760J "Jazz-Bo", completed and fitted with pickup and hidden controls - I hand-built this jazz guitar, from information provided to me by John Hall of Rickenbacker, with his permission. Carving, assembling, building ,and painting took 13 months and was completed December 31, 2007.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - The body being assembled and bound with checkerboard purfling and celluloid binding around the hand-carved, book-matched spruce top.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - Binding being held until cement hardens. Sides and back are flamed hard maple; top is best grade spruce.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - Raw neck before fitting and gluing. The neck "floats" on its glued tapered tenon joint. The part of the fretboard that hangs over the top is not attached to the top, to allow free vibration of the top wood. There is a .5 mm space under the neck that follows the sculpted top contour.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - The exposed part of the neck heel shows the laminated construction. It's capped with a 2 mm thick piece of walnut.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - The cutaway area in construction. The hand-carved back (shown) began as a book-matched piece of hard flamed maple that was 24mm thick by 410 mm by 540mm long. It weighed about 6 kg. Following carving, the back had a uniform thickness of 2.5mm and weighed less than .5 kg.
760J "Jazz-Bo" - The headstock, integral with the laminated neck, demonstrates very clearly the 9 different laminations of hard maple and old growth maple that was harvested and stored over 2oo years ago.
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