Switches and Pickguards
I make a lot of Ibanez JEM style guitar replacement bodies. I'm working on a Left handed JEM style guitar body - in a Desert Yellow paint (shown here) for a customer (Greg). The question came up - will a standard pickguard fit on a rear routed Guitar Body? There are a few issues.
These pictures show a clear pickguard over a swirl painted guitar - a Black and White (details here). Notice on the left the switch looks like it is inside the pickguard.
That is OK if you use a clear pickguard with the big front hole, like this one:
I ususally keep a few of those in stock if you need one.
If you don't use a pickguard at all with a Rear routed body, then the switch moves fine. This is from anotehr BW project (details here).
If you DO use a pickguard with a FRONT routed body, then the switch moves fine because the switch is mounted to the pickguard, not the body. This is from a carbon fiber JEM (details here). The carbon fiber JEM is a JEM777V BK that has been refinished with a carbon fiber face.
This is a picture of the control cavity of a rear routed guitar.
For this project, we agreed to just glue the switch tip on a bit further out. This might bother some people if it hits the trem arm. But for Greg, it works. Other options discussed were cutting a hole in the body where the switch goes. Greg wanted the option to move to a clear pickguard later, so that wasn't used.
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