760 JAZZ-BO HAND-CARVED ARCHTOP JAZZ GUITAR

This build was based upon a body "hoop" (pre-bent and glued-up side assembly) that came directly from John Hall, RIC CEO, with instructions to "see what [we] could do with it".  Well, of course, we built a "Jazzbo", using the gift "hoop" as its basis.  John was also kind enough to allow us to photograph and measure the Jazz-Bo in the Rickenbacker "museum" at RIC headquarters during NAMM 2007, so our re-creation would be accurate. A bit over 13 months later, on New Years' Day, 2008, this Jazz-Bo was completed, strung up and played for the first time. It's solid, responsive, and a sweet player. In ten years, it's aged very well, loosened up a bit, and is still as nice to look at and play as it was on that first day of 2008. The 2 factory-built Jazz-Bos, which are about twice as old as this re-creation, do not have either pick guard or electrics installed. Our re-creation has a hand-wound Tom Short single coil "Jazz" pickup, mounted to a removable pick guard, with a 1/8" output jack and nearly invisible thumbwheel pots for volume and tone. These are all mounted to the back of the guard so as to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The neck features no less than 9 laminations, alternating between walnut and maple. Fretboard is, of course, bubinga, with full-width crushed mother-of-pearl fret markers. Top is top-quality Engelmann Spruce, hand-carved from a book matched flitch, with a very tight, straight book matched grain, and sides are AAAA maple. The back was carved from a 3/4" block of book matched AAAA maple, and has a cross sectional thickness at the center of only 2mm. As was the practice with many older Rickenbacker acoustic guitars from the 1940s and 1950s, the tailpiece and tuning machines were generic items, most often seen on Gibson instruments.