A Jazz bass has a few features that define it.  One of them is two single coil pickups; one mounted in the body near the bridge, one mounted in the pickguard closer to the neck.  I’m changing the one pickup to a Precision Bass humbucking pickup.

I need a new pickguard and I’m gonna make it myself.  This turned out to be one of the most labor intensive jobs in the whole project.  Read on

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This is the original pickguard.  The new one needs to have a different pickup hole.

I bought a hunk of cool looking pickguard material.  It’s made from 100% pure “mother of toilet seat”.  I think this will look cool with the red body.

I want to make a template out of wood so I can use a router to trim the shape and make it smooth.  I’ll trace the shape onto the wood, cut it out and use my sander to get it to the right shape.

I “borrowed” some toner from my works copy machine and made a full size copy of my pickguard on paper.

I glued the paper to a chunk of MDF wood and cut it kinda sorta close.  The using a sander, I sanded it close to the line on the paper (leaving a bit extra where the neck and control plate meet up).

Now to rough cut the pickguard out and use a sander to get it to the final shape.

Now it’s time to cut the pickup holes out.

I marked out the position on the blue tape and then rough cut the openings with a Dremel cut off wheel and some drill bits.  Then I used a sanding drum on the Dremel to get the final shape.

I used a card scraper to bevel the edges of the pick guard.  What a mess this made!  And what a pain in the butt!

Next step in the project is assembly and wiring.