NGD - Fender American Original 60's Jaguar!

Powdered Toast Man

Powdered Toast Man

New member
Technically yesterday, but whatever. Fender American Original 60's Jaguar in Surf Green! I picked it up used off Reverb. Came equipped with a Mastery Bridge. In great shape except for one chip on the very bottom of the body.

I had a TVL Jazzmaster and decided to move on from it. Funny enough, the Jazzmaster sold within an hour of this one coming through the door yesterday!

This is my first Jaguar and I'd never played one before. It's very interesting! Totally unique. The tone is completely unlike the Jazzmaster. I'd have to say it's actually more versatile than a JM. There's a HUGE array of tones available and pretty much every setting is usable in some way. The tone is bright, articulate, and punchy! Glassy jangle. The neck is very thick but very much similar to other AO60's guitars if you've played them.

I'm on the fence whether to try dropping the stock bridge back in. Internet opinion on the Mastery seems to range from mandatory mod to totally unnecessary and alters the tone. So.... I dunno?



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Congats!

Jags are great, once you adapt to the short scale.

I prefer the stock bridges. I don't like the way Mastery bridges look, feel, or operate/adjust.

If the bridge is giving you fits, you just need more tension on it. Use neck angle, extreme Gibson style angle if necessary, and/or use stiffer strings. Remember that the short scale makes any given set of strings looser then normal. In general, you want to go at least one set up in thickness from what you use on a Strat or Tele. Two up works even better.

I can tell by how low your bridge is that your neck is pretty flat as it is.

Only mod I make on Jags is to flip one of the pickup switches, so that both switches down give you bridge pickup, and both switches up give you neck pickup. Way easier and faster to switch neck to bridge or bridge to neck in the middle of a song, and far fewer dropped picks during pickup switches.

Be sure to mess with your tone knob when using the strangle switch. The strangle switch has the most extreme (and useful IMO) tonal effect when you use it in conjunction with lowered tone and/or volume settings.
 
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Awesome and congrats! Yesterday was a great day for offsets. My '62 reissue Jazzmaster in sonic blue arrived yesterday, too! Excited to get in the practice space and put it through its paces.
 
I just spent some time really tweaking the setup. Pulled the neck off and adjusted the truss rod. After 4 days in my house its acclimated and needed about 1/4 turn. That put the action stupid low but it's got almost no buzz and all notes ring. Also loosened the tension on the vibrato. With it set up to where the slide lock works I found the tension to feel too stiff and immediate. Apparently this can be an issue with Jags because they're short scale and if you're using too light strings (I've got 10's). Dialed the tension screw down and now it's better. Could maybe go further but I dont want the arm too low.

The tone of this guitar is just something else. The pickups are clear and articulate. Bright without being harsh and plenty of bass without being muddy. With a bit of OD it totally does that grinding chime sound and its awesome. Every switch and setting is totally usable. Even the darker rhythm circuit (which I found on the Jazzmaster to be complete mud).

I know Jaguars get mixed in together with Jazzmasters but having owned both I can't express how different the two are. Other than the body shape and the vibrato they don't sound or play anything alike. Personally I think the Jaguar is more versatile. If you think about the evolution of tone from the Tele to the Strat, the Jaguar sounds like the next step from there.
 
If a Jazzmaster sounds muddier than a Jaguar on the rhythm circuit, with both knobs dimed, there is a problem with the Jazzmaster, or it has some thing other than classic wiring. With the strangle circuit on the Jaguar disengaged, the Jazzmaster is a slightly brighter guitar, in general. Perhaps the Jazzmaster that you are referencing had overwound pickups, or non-typical potentiometer values. The rhythm circuit on these guitars being “muddy” is typically not the case, as long as the two knobs are all the way up. Rhythm circuit with both knobs all the way up is very similar to a stock classic Stratocaster neck tone. Neck pickup, one Meg volume pot, and 50 K tone pot.
 
Nice axe

Is it glassier and janglier than the JM? what pots were in the JM?

BTW the mastery bridge is a great mod. I installed one in my JM in order to increase the sustain and to cut back on the string movement at the saddle notch. The mastery bridge gets my head nod, slow clap followed by a toast.
 
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ItsaBass said:
If a Jazzmaster sounds muddier than a Jaguar on the rhythm circuit, with both knobs dimed, there is a problem with the Jazzmaster, or it has some thing other than classic wiring. With the strangle circuit on the Jaguar disengaged, the Jazzmaster is a slightly brighter guitar, in general. Perhaps the Jazzmaster that you are referencing had overwound pickups, or non-typical potentiometer values. The rhythm circuit on these guitars being “muddy” is typically not the case, as long as the two knobs are all the way up. Rhythm circuit with both knobs all the way up is very similar to a stock classic Stratocaster neck tone. Neck pickup, one Meg volume pot, and 50 K tone pot.
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The JM in question was the TVL signature model. It has Fender American Vintage '65 pickups in it. The diagrams I've seen are that the rhythm circuit has both pots at 50k. Yes, it was pretty dull sounding. On the lead or main circuit I had to install a treble bleed on the volume pot otherwise the volume knob was basically useless as it went from full bright ON to complete mud the moment you dialed it below 9.

Anyway, the JM did have a cool sound and I liked the tone but in the end after the initial honeymoon wore off the guitar just didn't inspire me anymore. I also found that the JM was magical sounding with my 1960 Super, however I ended up selling that amp. It just didn't have that same vibe with any of my other amps.

The JM was bright on certain settings, but overall I found it to have a mellower tone compared to the Jag. The Jaguar is very bright, tight, and focused.
 
Powdered Toast Man said:
The JM in question was the TVL signature model. It has Fender American Vintage '65 pickups in it. The diagrams I've seen are that the rhythm circuit has both pots at 50k. Yes, it was pretty dull sounding. On the lead or main circuit I had to install a treble bleed on the volume pot otherwise the volume knob was basically useless as it went from full bright ON to complete mud the moment you dialed it below 9.

Anyway, the JM did have a cool sound and I liked the tone but in the end after the initial honeymoon wore off the guitar just didn't inspire me anymore. I also found that the JM was magical sounding with my 1960 Super, however I ended up selling that amp. It just didn't have that same vibe with any of my other amps.

The JM was bright on certain settings, but overall I found it to have a mellower tone compared to the Jag. The Jaguar is very bright, tight, and focused.
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That sounds thoroughly bizarre for a Jazzmaster.

50K/50K on the rhythm circuit is "wrong," and would definitely sound like mud. It should be 1M/50K, which ends up sounding really similar to a dimed Strat volume and tone pot in "vintage" Strat wiring.

And the volume knob should be a 1M linear pot, which is used specifically to avoid the situation you described. The 1M makes it bright, but the linear makes the taper far less sensitive on the top end, giving you lots of fine adjustment without muddiness in the 6–10 range. Meanwhile, the Jaguar has a 1M audio pot, which is plenty bright, but does indeed get muddy fast when you turn it down.

I was under the impression that the TVL Jazzmaster was basically "vintage" specs, but with a silver toggle to activate the rhythm circuit, instead of the normal plastic slide switch.

This is not to say that Jaguars aren't plenty bright. They have slightly (but not extremely) brighter pickups, and 1M volume pots. But there should be no problem at all getting a Jazzmaster to be blisteringly bright, and to have a smooth sweep from bright to dark when using the knobs...and the Jaguar should sound more "rubbery."
 
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ItsaBass said:
That sounds thoroughly bizarre for a Jazzmaster.

50K/50K on the rhythm circuit is "wrong," and would definitely sound like mud. It should be 1M/50K, which ends up sounding really similar to a dimed Strat volume and tone pot in "vintage" Strat wiring.

And the volume knob should be a 1M linear pot, which is used specifically to avoid the situation you described. The 1M makes it bright, but the linear makes the taper far less sensitive on the top end, giving you lots of fine adjustment without muddiness in the 6–10 range. Meanwhile, the Jaguar has a 1M audio pot, which is plenty bright, but does indeed get muddy fast when you turn it down.

I was under the impression that the TVL Jazzmaster was basically "vintage" specs, but with a silver toggle to activate the rhythm circuit, instead of the normal plastic slide switch.

This is not to say that Jaguars aren't plenty bright. They have slightly (but not extremely) brighter pickups, and 1M volume pots. But there should be no problem at all getting a Jazzmaster to be blisteringly bright, and to have a smooth sweep from bright to dark when using the knobs...and the Jaguar should sound more "rubbery."
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Ah, well this explains a lot
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/O...01-04-2014.pdf

Pots on the TVL are 500K audio, not 1 meg. Rhythm circuit is 500K and 50K. Would explain why it was so much darker sounding. Also why there was so much fall off. The TVL was my first experience with a Jazzmaster (or any offset) and I guess I took it for granted that everyone on the interwebs said that it was basically a '65 Jazzmaster that was made in Mexico and had a big toggle switch instead of a slider (Like you also assumed). Turns out it's not. It's got '65 pickups but after that there's some changes that add up to a darker sounding guitar than a typical JM. And the sad part is I HAVE a pair of 1 meg pots sitting in my parts bin and I even had a set of 1 meg minipots that I ordered by accident and ended up recently selling because I had no use for them.

Now I want to try an MIA Jazzmaster. Still, I imagine the one problem I found with the TVL will still be an issue - RF interference. My basement already is very "buzzy" for some reason. The JM was about 2x worse than any of my other guitars which I assume was because the JM pickup design has very flat and wide coils. The Jag is noticeably better in this regard because it's got Strat-type pickups with the extra wraparound "claw" shielding.
 
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Yep; that explains it. 500K audio is definitely a different (though not extremely different) sounding pot when dimed, and a very different pot when turned down, vs. 1M linear.

It also sounds like you might have had your amp set so that you are doing most of your switching like a "normal" guitar – i.e. between your neck and your bridge pickup. Even with a 500K volume pot in the rhythm circuit, the circuit should not sound muddy when both roller knobs are dimed...if your amp is set for it. I have found that my main switching on Jags and JMs is between lead circuit and rhythm circuit, not between neck and bridge pickups. The neck pickup in the lead circuit sounds like the middle pickup in a Strat, and the rhythm circuit sounds like the neck pickup in a Strat. And just like on a Strat, I only go to the bridge pickup when I want a very bright, snappy sound. Therefore, I adjust my amp so that the neck pickup sounds good on both the lead and rhythm circuits, and do most of my playing on those two settings. The bridge I only go to when I want super bright anyhow, so it doesn't matter to me if it ends up sounding rather extreme. But it you set your amp up around balanced sounding bridge/neck switching (as most people do), then the rhythm circuit is "too dark," and just sits there unused.
 
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