PJ Pickguard

Warmoth Custom Guitar Parts - J-Bass Pickguard

 

It's best if you have a Jazz pickguard to have copied. But most custom pickguard places have templates for standard Jazz pickguards if they fit. (I say that because I've had a number of pickguards made for my SX basses and they don't even fit each other! Each needs to be exactly copied)

So I did a conversion on a Squier special 5er P/J. These come with two jazz pickups so it's sort of your problem. It went like this:

I put white artist tape over the pickup area on the old pickguard. I marked where the strings came across the pickguard. Then I took the pickguard and placed my P-bass 5 string pickups (split set) on the pickguard so the strings were in the right place with respect to the poles and marked around them onto the tape to show where I wanted the pickup to go.

I hauled the old pickguard to Pickguardian.com (local to me, but their are a number of places that do this. Pickguard Heaven or something like that is another one) and said I want a new pickguard in tort like this, but with the cutout for a P pickup as shown. Tony said, "no problem, and I've got a template for a Fender 5 string P-bass pickup cutout I can use." I came back later and had a perfect tort P-bass pickguard in my hand. I temporarily mounted the new pickguard and drew through the pickup hole what wood would have to be removed in a "bathtub" rout under the guard for the pickup (old rout was for a jazz pickup). [Note that the P-bass pickup is a bit lower in the guard than the location of a J neck pickup]

I did the rout and even though it's a p-bass guard and not a jazz you can see how it turned out. Great!

http://www.mrk-inc.com/users/fjacoby/PJBody.JPG

It looks as if the strings aren't quite lined up with the poles, but it's just because the bass was shot at a slight angle. If you look straight down on it they are perfect!