Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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thenewromance
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Re: Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Post by thenewromance » Tue Feb 04, 2020 8:25 am

Thanks a lot! DiMarzio EJ does actually sound intriguing. Never heard of them! Regarding Firebird/mini-humbuckers, I've noticed they get a lot of praise for their sound. For ease of use and since I'm not an experienced modder, I would prefer humbuckers of the same dimensions, so I don't have to fiddle too much. Soundwise, I guess you're probably spot-on, in that they sound less humbucker-y than PAFs and that's what I'm looking for.
Lindy Fralin and Bill Lawrence sound good, too, as do the Lollar El Rayos. I'm still considering how much I would want to spend, though. I believe expensive pickups aren't wasted money as you can always recoup much of the expense on the second-hand market, but I also wonder whether fitting pickups twice as expensive as the original guitar makes sense.

astro, thanks for pointing out the F-spacing! I did actually notice that already, since when browsing the Creamery shop I saw they have both spacings on offer for bridge pickups, and got out my calipers :)

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alexpigment
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Re: Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Post by alexpigment » Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:16 am

Perhaps I missed this while skimming the thread, but have you considered wiring the humbuckers in parallel. I just did this to a JB and now I really like the tone. I believe it should cut the DC resistance in half, thereby making the pickups brighter and lower output like you wanted.

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thenewromance
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Re: Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Post by thenewromance » Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:56 am

alexpigment wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:16 am
Perhaps I missed this while skimming the thread, but have you considered wiring the humbuckers in parallel. I just did this to a JB and now I really like the tone. I believe it should cut the DC resistance in half, thereby making the pickups brighter and lower output like you wanted.
I don't think that was mentioned. Thanks! Would that work in changing the tone of each humbucker when selected alone, or does that only affect the both-pickups-together position?

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alexpigment
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Re: Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Post by alexpigment » Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:45 am

thenewromance wrote:
Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:56 am
I don't think that was mentioned. Thanks! Would that work in changing the tone of each humbucker when selected alone, or does that only affect the both-pickups-together position?

It works for all positions. Assuming your humbuckers have 4 wires - which is not a given on the Duncan Designed humbuckers - it's a pretty easy mod. Anyway, I *believe* this is what you do:

Black and red wires both go to hot (e.g. the hot pot of the toggle switch), and green and white go to ground. If there's also a bare wire, that'll go to ground as well. This is for Seymour Duncan color codes; Fender color codes are different.

Hope that helps (and hopefully I'm remembering it correctly).

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Horsefeather
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Re: Humbuckers in a Jaguar - ideas?

Post by Horsefeather » Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:00 pm

I was going to suggest wiring your existing pickups in parallel as well. Since that was done already, I'll just add to the pot. First, to clarify, we're talking about wiring the two coils of a pickup in parallel with one another rather than the standard series. We're not talking about what happens when you select both pickups together.

I have a Pawn Shop Mustang and I modified one of the switches to move the neck humbucker between series, parallel, and split and I found that the parallel setting sounds almost the same as split save for the fact that it has no hum, since they still buck in that arrangement. It's a great way to get a totally different sound out of your pickup if you have the four wires it takes to do it. Worth a shot before buying anything.

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