Reader: Verne Andru
Hometown: Vancouver, British Columbia
Guitar: Mini Jaguar tuned in 5ths
I fell down the alt-tuning rabbit-hole by moving from guitar to mandolin, before landing on extended-range tenor guitar. I wanted a nice electric for that purpose, so I approached the Fender Custom Shop through my dealer for a 5-string Jaguar tenor but was told they couldn't do it. I let the idea slide. But then Fender released their Squier Mini Jazzmaster with a 22.75" scale. I realized it would be the perfect platform for tenor tuning—in 5ths—but across six strings. Making it more Jaguar-like would be up to me and Vancouver luthier Paul Iverson.
I found a used Mini Jazzmaster at Guitar Center, but the action was terrible and the fret ends needed attention. I pulled the neck to level the frets and was puzzled by the fret wire. It didn’t feel like the soft nickel I’m used to finding on inexpensive guitars, and it wasn’t stainless, either—but it still fought me. After leveling, I recrowned the frets, dressed the sharp ends, and polished them with 800- and 1,500-grit sandpaper. I’ve never gotten a fret job right on the first pass, but I can usually get it where I want over time as I get used to the feel of the instrument
While the bridge is nothing fancy, it was high quality and the saddles allow a wide range of adjustments. The bigger surprise was the pickups, which sounded great. Even so, I thought GFS’ lipstick humbuckers would be a better fit, and I love the simplicity of lipstick designs in general. With the style of a 1964 Jaguar in mind, I used a tortoise pickguard, but also painted a matching headstock, over which I laid a Jaguar decal. Cutting the pickguard for the Jaguar control plates took some time, but with the cuts made and the Jaguar plates in hand, I got to work on the switching.
I learned electronics from Gar Gillies of Garnet amp fame, so I was comfortable trying a few things. Each pickup’s coils can now run in series, in parallel, or as a single-coil, and a push/push volume knob puts the two pickups in series or parallel with each other. There’s also a zero-load switch that bypasses the volume and tone controls, a blend knob for the two pickups, and a phase switch where a Jaguar’s “bass strangle” switch would go.
The project came out well, and the guitar has become a reliable daily player. I added Wilkinson tuners with a 19:1 ratio for finer tuning. Their long posts have two string holes, and I use the upper one on the Bb so the string doesn’t kink over the nut and throw off the intonation. The lipstick humbuckers sound great, and the guitar is light and easy to play. Tuned in fifths—Bb–F–C–G–D–A—it covers an enormous range. The low string sits a semitone below the low B on a 7-string, and the top string climbs into mandolin territory. Best of all, the switching options give me that many more ways to work with that range. It’s a small guitar, but it does a lot.
