Incoming: Jazzmaster spin off

[Marty Grass]

I got a G&L Doheny on the way. I thought about this for a couple of years then jumped in.

On the positive side, G&L does a great job of making a working man's guitar. I found the quality and playability to be excellent and predictable. The Fullerton instruments are PLEK'd. All good.

The Doheny is inspired by the Jazzmaster, an instrument I'm very familiar with. The thing is, the Jazzmaster at the inception was neither a jazz instrument or masterfully designed. The bridge was not well designed. The rhythm circuit was okay but not great. It was still a decent guitar and helped solidify the surf sounds.

The Doheny has the broad single coil pickups on them with adjustable pole pieces. The sound is definitely a chimey single coil thing. But if a Tele can do jazz, the Doheny can also. It has 22 frets and a 25.5" scale. The electronics are simpler than the Jazzmaster of old. I do favor the passive treble and bass roll off pots over a single tone pot.

This particular guitar is made with empress wood. This is a light wood. This guitar weighs only 6.7 lbs. The trees are fast growing and quickly renewable. That's good news for humanity I'd guess. But what's interesting is the comments on the using empress for guitar builds. There are fears about the wood being less dense to the point that screws will pop out and that it will ding easily. Others who has experience with empress guitars refute that. We'll see. Any statement about a guitar build might lead to an argument.

[ESCC]

The only words I can come up with are . . . VERY COOL! A nice addition to your collection.

[Gitfiddler]

Nice score, Mark. I've always considered that body shape very sexy, in a hip-shfting, Mae West kind of way.

[Hammertone]

It only took G&L 40 years to figure this one out, ha!

Empress wood, or paulownia, is pretty cool stuff.
There are crapalicious, cheap-ass paulownia bodies widely available on ebay, from Eden, but nicely made paulownia bodies are great. The big boys are getting into the game now - Fender's Brad Paisley Tele has a paulownia core with spruce top and back, Suhr did a limited tele and will probably do more, Anderson, Kirn, Mario Martin/Guitar Mill, Yaron, Hansen and more...

One of my Hansen teles has a paulownia body, has a total weight of @5 1/2 pounds, and sounds great. I think it's great for a Jazzmaster shape because, even with the bigger body, the weight can be kept down. And balance will never be an issue, even with a heavy neck/tuners.

It is indeed a very soft wood. Look at it and it dents. So, it works particularly well with reliced finishes as far as owner anguish goes. As far as screws go, some makers put maple dowels in the key areas and screw into those. Other simply use bigger screws.

[Marty Grass]

[Gitterbug]

For DIY Paulownia users: Impregnating the wood around screw holes with low-viscosity superglue such as Locktite 406 or Zap PT07 will make screws hold. I'm using Paulownia for the back plates of Toob 12J and 12B speaker cabs. 4.2 mm coarse-thread chipboard screws work well. No impregnation needed.