Jazzmaster body with Strat pickups?

[Waygorked]

i'm thinking thsi may be my next project. I love my JM, and love the tone of my strat, but after playing the JM the strat always feels like a letdown in the ergonomic department. I have a bunch of great Strat parts lying around from aborted projects, such as a full Callaham bridge and a set of Dimarzio Areas, as well as a set of Kinmans. I got so far as to order the pickguard from Warmoth to add to tone of my mutant JMs, but the TV Jones in that one sound so good that I'm inclined to leave it.

So, the questions:

How does a JM body sound wiht strat pickups? This is assuming a Warmoth body routed for a standard Fender vintage 6 hole trem. Are there any issues with pickup placement that make it lose it's essential Stratness? Does it sound like a strat, only bigger, and more playable (my expectation)?

Should I order an Alder or Ash body?

[vale]

if it's 25.5 scale, has an alder body of typical fender weight & has strat pickups it will sound exactly like a strat.
the pickups & strings don't care what shape the outline is.
i imagine that is why fender used singles on the shorter scale mustang but p90s on the full scale jazzmaster. so it wouldn't sound the same as a strat & people who had strats would have reason to consider it as an alternative.

if you used mahogany or a heavy swamp ash that increase its density, that may give a marginal difference in tone. but how much of that gets translated into something you can hear once your signal has been through your pedal board & amp & air in the room is arguably not a great deal.
'the tonewood debate' is a monster & another topic really. personally i buy with my ears & if i like the sound of a guitar i like it, no matter what it's made of. in fact i don't even know what my jag bass is made of, it's doesn't matter. i bought it because it looked & sounded just how i wanted. if someone said 'oh no, that's the wrong wood!' i would like it no less.

if you use powerful single pups like p90s you will get a much bigger difference in tone. beefier & fuller (more output & more bottom end). but it sounds as if you are trying to avoid them.
placing probably won't achieve a huge amount more than having a strat set up, bridge/middle/neck, & being able to switch between nearer-bridge or nearer-neck options. spanky & trebly at the bridge, & warmer with more harmonics at the neck.

some wills vids here seem to explain basics quite well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnHH6Uke090
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv3ijmNkq0s

[mcjt]

[straightblues]

I am building one right now. I would love to see some pictures of others who have done this for some inspiration.

[andy_tchp]

if it's 25.5 scale, has an alder body of typical fender weight & has strat pickups it will sound exactly like a strat.
the pickups & strings don't care what shape the outline is.

Yes.

i imagine that is why fender used singles on the shorter scale mustang but p90s on the full scale jazzmaster. so it wouldn't sound the same as a strat & people who had strats would have reason to consider it as an alternative.

No.

- Jazzmaster pickups are not P90s. They are regular single coil pickups with wide flatwork, and (usually) shallow/wide windings around the bobbin most of the way out to the edge.

- Even if they had used Strat pickups a Jazzmaster still wouldn't have sounded 'the same as a Strat'. A huge amount of the JM signature sound comes from the bridge, vibrato and shallow break angle across the bridge. Then add the 1M pots and they're different beasts entirely.


Exactly the same as how Mustangs don't sound 'like a Strat' even though the pickups are functionally identical aside from the hole-less covers.

[vale]

if it's 25.5 scale, has an alder body of typical fender weight & has strat pickups it will sound exactly like a strat.
the pickups & strings don't care what shape the outline is.

Yes.

i imagine that is why fender used singles on the shorter scale mustang but p90s on the full scale jazzmaster. so it wouldn't sound the same as a strat & people who had strats would have reason to consider it as an alternative.

No.

- Jazzmaster pickups are not P90s. They are regular single coil pickups with wide flatwork, and (usually) shallow/wide windings around the bobbin most of the way out to the edge.

- Even if they had used Strat pickups a Jazzmaster still wouldn't have sounded 'the same as a Strat'. A huge amount of the JM signature sound comes from the bridge, vibrato and shallow break angle across the bridge. Then add the 1M pots and they're different beasts entirely.

Exactly the same as how Mustangs don't sound 'like a Strat' even though the pickups are functionally identical aside from the hole-less covers.

so standard vintage jazzmaster pups had/have same output as strats? curious. but i suspect you know more about them than i. i've never actually had a jazzmaster with stock, only p90s, so will admit to not knowing a great deal about the stock vintage deal.

break angle & bridge take a bit of top off definitely, fair point. but by tweaking tone/eq you can sharpen it up quite a bit.
on a purely subjective note the jm trem is why i prefer hardtail-string-though-body jms to vintage trem jms. that break-angle mushes the tone for me.
plus i like high gain pups, & high gains & that trem are a bad mix to my ears. others may like that smoothed-out-ness but i find it too flat & compressed. high gains compress dynamics a bit anyway, so hardtail compensates for that & gives you some bite & spring to work against.

the 1m pots would have been a simple mod for any player who had a clue. & only extending range of whatever was on there anyway (500k?) by a half turn etc, would they not?

i think short-scale a far bigger factor in making the mustangs sound different to the strat than any hardware issue, though trem break-angle adds to that short-scale softening of edges.

[andy_tchp]

i imagine that is why fender used singles on the shorter scale mustang but p90s on the full scale jazzmaster. so it wouldn't sound the same as a strat & people who had strats would have reason to consider it as an alternative.

No.

- Jazzmaster pickups are not P90s. They are regular single coil pickups with wide flatwork, and (usually) shallow/wide windings around the bobbin most of the way out to the edge.

- Even if they had used Strat pickups a Jazzmaster still wouldn't have sounded 'the same as a Strat'. A huge amount of the JM signature sound comes from the bridge, vibrato and shallow break angle across the bridge. Then add the 1M pots and they're different beasts entirely.

Exactly the same as how Mustangs don't sound 'like a Strat' even though the pickups are functionally identical aside from the hole-less covers.

so standard vintage jazzmaster pups had/have same output as strats?

No, and I didn't suggest that they did. They share construction methods with regular Fender single coil pickups; magnetic pole-pieces with one very long coil wrapped around them. They have a higher DCR and a unique tone due to the much shorter/wider wraps (and increased surface area) of the coil when compared with a Strat/Tele/Jaguar pickup.

P90s have bar magnets at the bottom of the bobbin and (usually) threaded pole-pieces, with (again, a generalisation) higher output accentuated in the midrange. They are not constructed like Jazzmaster pickups. They do not sound like Jazzmaster pickups.

curious. but i suspect you know more about them than i. i've never actually had a jazzmaster with stock, only p90s, so will admit to not knowing a great deal about the stock vintage deal.

break angle & bridge take a bit of top off definitely, fair point. but by tweaking tone/eq you can sharpen it up quite a bit.

It's a lot more than taking 'a bit off the top'. It completely changes the attack/decay/sustain characteristics and whole feel of the guitar. If anything it accentuates the top end snappiness of the initial attack and mellowing out as notes decay.

Tweaking EQ is not going to compensate much for this. (You later indicated a preference for string-through-body hardtail guitars due to tonal and 'feel' reasons...)

the 1m pots would have been a simple mod for any player who had a clue. & only extending range of whatever was on there anyway (500k?) by a half turn etc, would they not?

I am struggling to parse the above. Jazzmasters come with 1M pots as standard, no 'mod' (or having a clue ) required. It dramatically shifts the resonant peak (upwards). A popular mod is lowering these values to 500K or 250K to reduce shrillness into bright amps, but these Jazzmasters don't suddenly sound 'like a Strat' (yes, I've tried any/all common values in several different guitars over the years...)

i think short-scale a far bigger factor in making the mustangs sound different to the strat than any hardware issue, though trem break-angle adds to that short-scale softening of edges.

Also an entirely different vibrato assembly, resulting in a much different sound, even when directly compared to other short scale Fenders like the Jaguar.

[NICQ]

here's mine :




Fender Fat 50s Custom Shop Pickups in an Lee Ranaldo Signature Alder Body with a beautiful thin Squier Neck
I installed a switch to add the neck pickup to pos 4 (=all PUs together) and 5 (= neck+bridge like a tele)

Sounds just like a Strat as far as I can tell (haven't played on in a while) but position 2 and 4 definatley has the quack going on (2x 250k pots)
maybe it's a bit more "metallic" sounding overall especially on the bridge with the overtones from the JM Tremolo...