Garage Master w/ Jazz & Full Shred

M Pete

New member
I just started playing last year just as an extra hobby to do at home and am gradually upgrading gear. A few months ago I upgraded my first acoustic (Aria) to a nice Takamine and immediately felt the results of better gear. Way back in 2006 when I bought a Jetta I also received one of the VW/First Act Garage Master guitars which I still have. I had been playing it a bit, got good strings, adjusted it, and it is not a bad guitar (based on my experience, LOL!!), but it just sounded very muddled, especially in the lows and when compared to my other electric (inexpensive Strat clone). I had contemplated getting an inexpensive LP style as an upgrade, but I like to tinker and was not ready to give up on the guitar yet, especially since it was free. I ended up ordering Seymour Duncan pickups, Jazz Model neck and Full Shred bridge, and installed them last night myself. Even though I have never used a soldering iron before in my life it was not too bad. If I can do it you can too!!!! I absolutely love this guitar now, it sounds fantastic even through my little Fender Frontman with the Jensen speaker upgrade. All of the definition I was looking for and great sound when I click on my distortion pedal. I am so glad I went this route instead of purchasing something else. I personally love the unique style and now has great sound to match. If anyone has one of these (especially if you got it for free) I'd recommend a pickup upgrade. Instillation was so easy that I'm considering buying one of the semi-hollow bodies off of Amazon and using that as a base to mod.

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I remember seeing those in a VW ad. Even though they're First Act, they're still cool. I think those could become collectors items. Or, at least the knobs will.

Anyway, nice project. Enjoy.
 
glad you are happy with the results! what do the little switches do?

These have an internal small powered amp so that you could plug in to the aux port of your car stereo, but you can also use it passive too. There is the normal tone and volume you can use without the internal amp, but if you switch the amp on the lower knob is gain control and the two switches between the top two knobs (tone and volume) are for 4 different preset sounds, 2 with distortion, 2 clean.
 
Fun guitars! The stock pickups were awful. I made new ones. The onboard preamp was ok, but I removed it because I was having a hum issue, that had nothing to do with the preamp. Also added a Bigsby style vibrato.

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Very cool! I like doing stuff like this because I learn new skills along the way and this is a good platform to do it with IMO. I never use the onboard preamp, cool concept, but you can get much better sound with pedals which don't really cost much and then you have them for other guitars as well. Technically you could plug this in to any stereo, or even bluetooth it to any wireless speaker with an adapter. It would not sound good, but the concept is neat, IMO.
 
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