Wiring Kits

[sndansby]

Is there a wiring kit you guys would recommend for my 2008 MIJ Jazzmaster?

[kdanie]

I used this one on a project years ago and it works well but I don't know if the bracket would fit a MIJ.

https://www.eyguitarmusic.com/Wiring-Ki ... _2513.html

ken

[Paul-T]

that's a really good value kit! I used grguitars who were good but slightly more expensive.

Make sure the Japanese knobs fit the CTS pots, I believe you might need US-style knobs for those.

[sndansby]

I was looking at this one
https://reverb.com/p/920d-custom-shop-j ... fid=356234

but I do not know if the quality is as what it should be and it is $90.

[Paul-T]

You will surely get hit for import charges , so allow for that. I seem to get 20% plus the £8 collection fee on everything

Eyguitar looks like a much better value option, certainly better than the grg one I've just received.

If you really want a prewired one it is going to cost more. This one is in the UK and worth considering - good components, but not cloth-covered wire. If you want to save funds you could simply omit the rhythm circuit (that's what I'm doing).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/163478489811 ... 3478489811

[andy_tchp]

You will surely get hit for import charges , so allow for that.

From memory the OP is in the USA, so no.

[Paul-T]

Sorry, my bad.

This eBay kit look to have all good quality components.

http://vi.raptor.ebaydesc.com/ws/eBayIS ... 7000&ver=0

But the 920D looks good. There's a parts breakdown here - it's all CTS and Switchcraft. Might be cheaper direct (I can't see dollar prices here).

https://920dcustom.com/collections/prew ... ng-harness

[Soniqfreq]

Just wanted to add to this older thread for future readers looking to rewire an MIJ/CIJ jazzmaster.

I recently got the MIJ wiring kit from EYGuitar based on this thread. A mini pot broke straight away. The pots and switches from EYGuitar are really cheap and I wouldn’t rely on them. I ended up sourcing separate USA CTS pots, MIA knobs, and switchcraft switches. Mounted everything on an MIJ pickguard just fine…but I used the MIJ rhythm bracket…a USA bracket probably doesn’t align with the mounting holes in the MIJ pickguard and didn't want extra holes (hopefully someone can confirm).

If you go with metric mini pots you definitely need the MIJ roller knobs and if you go MIA pots you need the MIA knobs. Totally different shaft sizes and roller knob hole sizes.

A USA parts build is the way to go. My MIJ never sounded and played as good as it does with a new MIA spec wiring.

[timtam]

One needs to seriously question the justification for swapping an existing harness for a new one, especially on MIJ guitars. There was on old prejudice that suggested that MIJ guitars had 'cheap' wiring. That was often wrong. Yes, they sometimes had smaller pots. But small doesn't mean inferior. And the shielded conductor wiring in some MIJs is actually better than the unshielded, single conductor wiring in most MIAs. So removing shielded wiring in favour of unshielded could get you a noisier guitar. There are a number of things in addition to unshielded wiring done poorly in Fender MIA guitars, but most of those are not addressed by new commercial harnesses (and even despite those issues, the guitars still 'work').

By all means if a component is not working, consider replacing it. But replacing just a single faulty component might only cost you 10% or less of the cost of a full harness.

About the only good reason to change to a new harness on an existing guitar is if it offers switching options that you want but don't currently have. Which would mean that the only justification for a new standard-wiring harness is if you are building a guitar from scratch (and don't want to solder anything except pickups).

Some harness makers prey on some peoples' misunderstandings of what's important in guitars, which was exemplified recently when one of the US harness makers mentioned here was caught out supplying fake "exotic" capacitors in its harnesses.

[Embenny]

Yeah, I agree with that. My '94 MIJ Jag has never had a single issue with any of the stock pots or switches. Yhe stock pickups were for the birds, but that's unrelated. The only thing in the harness that I switched out was the 50k roller pot in the rhythm circuit for another 1M. I prefer being able to set the tone where I want it instead of being forced into a set minimum amount of treble cut.

[Soniqfreq]

That’s exactly why I did a complete rewire…so that when I go to sell it I still have the original harness for the MIJ purists. I find rewiring a new harness a great way to learn more about how my guitar works and myself as a player. It allows me to try different components and mods without messing with the original.

I’ve had plenty of MIJ guitars that were fantastic as is. Unfortunately, I recently bought a 2010 JM66 and it sounded bad (even with Novaks installed by the previous owner) and the pots moved way too freely and didn’t perform to my liking. I tried sourcing replacement metric parts but they were crap and a waste of money. A completely new harness I wired myself made the most sense for my situation and turned out fantastic. Added bonus, I can now troubleshoot my JM easily because I put the time in to learn its layout.

[Soniqfreq]

Here are the before and after pics of my JM66 rewire.

[timtam]

Assuming that the top pic is the 'before' pic, that shows nice shielded conductor wiring everywhere. And unshielded single-conductor wiring in the 'after' pic. It's understandable and commendable that you wanted to learn how to wire a guitar. But to do that in the most optimum fashion you would have copied the before pic.

[Soniqfreq]

Assuming that the top pic is the 'before' pic, that shows nice shielded conductor wiring everywhere. And unshielded single-conductor wiring in the 'after' pic. It's understandable and commendable that you wanted to learn how to wire a guitar. But to do that in the most optimum fashion you would have copied the before pic.

Educate me. What make's the before (MIJ) wiring scheme more optimal?

[timtam]

Shielded conductors in the original MIJ wiring.

Your guitar cable to the amp is a shielded single conductor. Your internal guitar wiring should be too. That's why the Japanese chose it - standard electronics practice for low level signals. To protect them from external sources of interference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shielded_cable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_shielding

OTOH Fender's MIA unshielded single conductor wiring with cloth-covered pushback wire was a cheap and quick way in the 1950s to wire guitars - no need to strip the ends of shielded wire and twist the shield for soldering*. Somehow that all got confused and some people thought cloth-covered uninsulated single-conductor wire was somehow 'better', probably associated with the undiscriminating mythology around "vintage correct" being better in every way.

*Gibson got around that problem with their own dubious contribution to poor guitar wiring practice - uninsulated braid-shielded wire. Which meant that could just solder the exposed shield directly to the back of pots - no stripping required ... but at the expense of having an exposed ground signal floating around in the cavity.

Of course if you shield your guitar cavities and pickguard as is now much more commonly done, you may end up with similar shielding performance to having shielded conductors. But one reason why that added shielding is necessary is the common lack of shielded conductors in guitars, in our increasingly EMI-contaminated environments. Unfortunately AFAIK there's no comprehensive objective experimental work on the relative shielding performance of shielded conductors vs cavity shielding (by paint with varying resistivity vs copper or aluminium foil of different thicknesses) on the various wavelengths/frequencies of common guitar interference sources ... just some educated guesses/empirical experiments by people like Bill Lawrence and Manfred Zollner (but it would make a nice graduating project for communications engineering students, who would know both the signals theory and the appropriate measurement technology). There are some instances where poor shielded cable can have undesirable effects - for example Zollner measured one example of a poor quality braided-shield cable used by Gibson that had high measured capacitance. But capacitance is easily measured to ensure the cable chosen has small relative capacitance. Which then pales in significance to the higher capacitance of guitar cables (because capacitance is dependent on cable length).