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Mo'Jo Little Jake _______________ owned by Jacob Roth

This guitar design was a collaboration with my ten-year-old nephew.  I had him look through half a dozen music catalogues and then I gave him a pencil and a sheet of graph paper and told him to draw a guitar that I would build for him.  I took that drawing and did a little tweaking for balance/proportions, and then built him this fine little instrument. I call it a "7/8 size" instrument, for lack of a better term.  The scale length is like a 25 1/2" capoed at the first fret.  The neck's width and thickness are also proportionally downsized. The body is "real" Poplar (populus tremulides, not Tulip Poplar), and the neck is the standard maple/rosewood recipe complete with MOP dot markers, a bone nut and stainless steel double acting truss rod.  The bridge is a custom Mo'Jo baseplate (1/8" stainless) with Graph Tech Wilkinson style saddles (they made for the narrowest string spread I could find without going to a tune-o-matic type).  Electronics consist of two no-name mini humbuckers feeding two 500k volume pots (no switching, no tone controls). I chose the body wood and pickups originally thinking that, since this was an undersized instrument for a beginning student, it didn't make sense to use pro spec materials.  Much to my surprise, the combination of Poplar, those pickups and the "mix-n-match" two volume set up produced absolutely KILLER tones!  Just by turning the volume knobs, I could go from VH-esque, warm-yet-bright distortion, to funky/bluesy "middle position" sounds, to mellow jazz tone.  The night I test assembled  and photographed it, I ended up playing it for 2 straight hours!  I couldn't put it down it was so much fun to play.  After playing it every night for a week, I finally had to force myself to disassemble it and paint it (a dazzling gold sparkle finish, no less). If you believe anything on this website, believe this; there will DEFINITELY be a standard Mo'Jo offering in the Poplar/minibucker/2-volume configuration, and soon!  Stay tuned. Also, if anyone wants this body/headstock style in a full-size version, I'll be more than happy to make it (with your choice of wood, electronics and hardware, of course).

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