We recently completed the first Baritone Healer! It has a 28” scale length and is tuned B standard like all those lovely Danelectro’s out there. This is also the second Healer for our friend Andrew K. who was the first person to ask us to include a neck circuit like a Fender JM and an aluminum pickguard. For that commission I altered the design of the original Healer guard to fit the extra wiring and we’ve used it quite a few times since.

For this Healer we used a bookmatched Walnut top over a chambered Mahogany body. The neck is Mahogany with a Macassar Ebony headcap, fretboard, and back laminate. The pickguard is raw aluminum sanded to a fine satin sheen to better match up with the @masterybridge M7.2

The hard tail bridge allows for top loading strings or through the body. While stringing this one up I found that the tone of the low B and E strings was better strung from the top so it remains that way for now. Maybe it’s the strings, but it really made them ring more clearly, with better sustain too.

We used Jaguar pickups for the neck and middle positions like the classic Fender Bass VI. Then there’s a 12 pole alnico Humbucker under a JM cover in the bridge, all made by Jaime at The Creamery Pickups in the UK. The humbucker has an awesome cutting mid-range, and sounds great with either the middle, or neck pickup, thanks to the Blender pot in the third spot on the row of knobs. This pot allows you to truly BLEND the Neck pickup with the Bridge or Vice-Versa depending on where you are on the 5 way pickup selector. In positions 2 and 4 all 3 pickups are ON.

The neck circuit allows the neck pickup to be selected with the switch in the upper part of the pickguard. It has its own independent volume and tone when selected and automatically has a darker tone because of the 50k volume pot. I’ve always felt this is the “jazz” tone and the namesake of the Jazzmaster.

We continue to use water base finish on the majority of our guitars. The matte finish on the neck is very comfortable and smooth and doesn’t gloss up like even satin lacquer will over time. I dig the aesthetic too, some contrast between matte and gloss is pretty sweet. The body is gloss because that top deserves to shine. We look forward to making more baritone guitars in the future.