Baritone conversion project

[EL34]

I got my Baritone neck from All Parts.
Very nice quality and it has 24 frets.
https://www.allparts.com/products/sr-bar-replacement-neck-for-stratocaster?

The frets are smaller than my original neck, but about the same as my Squier Jazzmaster.

There was some mods that had to be done to fit my Fender Custom Tuners.
The hole sizes had to be increased and two small alignment pin holes had to be drilled.

[EL34]

The neck mounting screw holes had to be drilled out slightly undersized to fit the neck screws.
Maple is way too hard to try and force the screws into a non drilled hole
1/8 inch bit was perfect.

The screw holes were counter sunk a tiny bit to eliminate the raised up wood that happens when you screw in the screws.
I forgot to take a picture of that process.

The fret board wood looks nice.
The fret ends were all dressed nicely.

The neck wood was bare and so I applied a couple thin wipes of Tru-Oil

[EL34]

I had to shorten the fret board because it was about 1/16 inch from the Jazzmaster pickup
The two front pickup screws were under the fret board over hang and there was no way to remove the pickup.
I don't need 24 frets on this guitar so, no big deal
You can see the original length fret board a couple post up.

Here's the strings I am using
That .072 is a monster and make s a big BONG noise

[EL34]

I added two more springs and removed the Trem bar
The Baritone string gauges were beefy
72-56-44-30-18-13
The 30 is wound unlike most regular guitar string sets
I basically made the guitar into a hard tail
I added a string tree to the 18 and 13

The nut came out really nice
I have a set of wires that are abrasive that I was able to use to file out the nut grooves
I had to reduce the nut width by .46 mm which I did on my cnc machine
The height was perfect
The length needed a tiny bit taken off to match the neck width

I have a notched straight edge for Gibson and Fender but they don't have the correct spacing's for a Baritone
I found a aluminum one on Amazon that only had one side notched
I laid it down on the Baritone fret board and made sharpie marks where the frets were on the side with no notches
It got clamped into my desktop mill and I used a 1/4 inch end mill to cut the notches
 
I had given the truss rod a small back bow tweak before I mounted the neck thinking the Baritone strings would need that and maybe more
When I checked the neck relief using the notched straight edge it has maybe a .002 gap and no fret buzzing
Have to check it again later after everything settles in

[EL34]

Here is the Baritone conversion all done
It used to be my Jazz-O-Caster #2
Here's the link to that build
https://el34world.com/Forum/index.php?topic=19570.0

It has Mojo Jazzmaster pickups and Fender deluxe hardware
It also has one of the Fender TBX Tone controls
There is a center detente for neutral and then up or down from there for Treble and Bass control

The normal Baritone tuning is B - E - A - D - F# - B
That proved to be a lot of neck tension and so I went down a step

The tuning is now A - D - G - C- E - A
I play a lot of stuff in A so that should be great

[EL34]

And here is the first Baritone demo
I call this one Baritone Dance

https://el34world.com/Misc/Music/files/BaritoneDance.mp3

The left channel has the Baritone doing some rhythm
The right channel is my Squier Jazzmaster doing chords
Right down the center is the Baritone doing lead

[Willabe]

I like that. Sounds a little like the old spaghetti western sound tracks.