This is a clone of the Jack Orman Mini Booster. The enclose was etched using the Bantam Tools desktop milling machine. The circuit board layout was done by me using Autodesk Eagle. It was also made on the Bantam Tools desktop milling machine.

I’ve been using a Cricket Maker 3 to put some designs onto t-shirts. These two are not my designs, so we’ll categorize them as “tests”. The blue one is from “The Book of the SubGenius”. The white shirt character is from one of my son’s books.

The Cricut is really coming in handy by getting ideas down quickly. It doesn’t compare to screen printing but I’d rather do this than go through the entire screen printing process unless there was a need to mass-produce.

I’m currently in the process of building myself a Fender Jazzmaster style guitar. The body was purchased from MJT and the color is Antigua. The neck is off of a 40th anniversary Squier Jazzmaster. Thought about purchasing a neck from Warmoth but found the particular neck I’m using to be comfortable and there was really no need to upgrade.

There is one issue with the neck, however. The holes that are used to mount onto the guitar body were improperly drilled, so I enlarged the holes and glued some dowels into the holes. Next step is to cut the dowels and redrill the holes in the correct spot. 


This was plotted using the Cricut Maker 3 and a Pilot V5 pen. The image is split into different sections and then filled using the Axidraw “Hatch Fill” extension in Inkscape. The lines are 1mm and vary in degrees within their sections.

Finished up the Jazzmaster build and it plays very well. It’s a little loud because of the nature of the pickups. They are high-output Electrical Guitar Company pickups and sound great.

The last 15 years of Squier guitars have been my favorite because of the variety in colors and guitar models. However, the quality control has gone downhill. This particular guitar had a slightly cracked fretboard, likely due to severely dry wood. A bit of lemon oil took care of the issue. The crack is still there, but the wood is now completely flat and will probably not be a problem unless the guitar is neglected again. Besides that issue, the guitar was fine but needed the typical setup.

The bridge had some heat-shrink tubing to keep it from moving too much and to help with tuning stability. The wiring always makes me laugh because of the ridiculously long cuts of wire they use. The work could be a bit cleaner, but that would increase the price, which isn't worth it. As for the pickups, they're fine. I've never had an issue with Squier pickups or felt the need to replace them. However, I play through a Fender Twin Reverb, which makes anything sound good.