Jazz tone.

["William Walker" <billwalker@baymoon.com>]

 I agree that there have been some great practitioners of “Jazz” tone on solid body guitars. I’d add John McLaughlin (duo sonic with Miles, and various les pauls and SG’s). Danny Gatton could lay down incredible jazz lines (and everything else) on a tele.  The great Canadian guitarist Ed Bickert, who played with Paul Desmond and Rosemary Clooney, among others, was a tele guy. I ‘d also like to note that many landmark 50’s Jazz guitar recordings were done on P-90 pickups as it wasn’t until 56 when the first Gibson humbuckers appeared. I think the association with Jazz and hollow body artchtop guitars goes back much earlier to the ragtime and big band era, and isn’t necessarily relevant to today, though many traditionalists wouldn’t be caught dead with out a Jazz box.  Recently I put together a parts Telecaster with a very light weight mahogany body and a maple conversion scale neck (i.e a standard gibson scale length for a fender body). I started out with a set of mini humbuckers, and currently am trying a set of Duncan stack soapbars. The Soapbars are a little less smooth and are spankier sounding, but still suitable for a darker jazz tone, if I roll off the treble. The minis are a bit smoother and fatter though still more focused than standard humbuckers. I’m not sure which pickups I’ll keep in the guitar as I like em both.  I built this guitar to be my low budget jazz rock box and heavy strung slide guitar, to replace a PRS Hollow body I had to sell a couple of years ago. What I like about this Teleson, or gibcaster is it is not only versatile sounding,  Its a bolt on neck  so I don’t have too treat it too delicately, or worry about is welfare every time I play out at a rowdy club.

Bill