Upgrading my JM to it's full potential, the neverending modding ! (2024 : New pickguard year ?)

[epizootics]

Cool beans Flurko! That is one elegant & understated Jazzmaster.

By the looks of it, those saddle grooves are way too wide/deep. That's a recipe for sitar sounds. If I were you I'd get a set of non-grooved, compensated Korean brass saddles (about 4-5€ on Aliexpress, check out the Guitar Family store - they are solid brass and I suspect them to be sold as Wilkinson saddles everywhere else) and file my own grooves with nut files.

Also, if you want to eliminate the annoying sideways movement of those saddles (since they are not pressed against each other at the sides), you can replace those springs with thin M3 nut from the hardware store. Just set up your intonation & height and tighten them against the wall of the bridge, and voilà! One less element to worry about.

[Flurko]

I've finally put back the saddles that were previously on. It's uglier because the brass plating is worn in a weird pattern, but it works ! It was a classic case of not fixing something that wasn't broke.

[Lost In Autumn]

I still need to fix the buzzing saddle issue, I also had to set the action higher than on any of my other guitars to be able to make whole tone bends in the upper frets, I don't really understand what I would need to do in terms of setup to adress this ? the neck relief seems similar to my other guitars (basically the same room under a string fretted at both ends of the fingerboards and the 12th fret).

have you shimmed your neck?

[Flurko]

I still need to fix the buzzing saddle issue, I also had to set the action higher than on any of my other guitars to be able to make whole tone bends in the upper frets, I don't really understand what I would need to do in terms of setup to adress this ? the neck relief seems similar to my other guitars (basically the same room under a string fretted at both ends of the fingerboards and the 12th fret).

have you shimmed your neck?

Yes, I have a 1mm Stewmac shim, the bottom of the bridge was touching the pickguard before.

[Flurko]

Small update : This guitar is still playing as great as ever, I'm really happy with all the mods I did to it earlier in this thread !

BUT, as I can't leave it alone for more than a few months, I'm wondering how to make the headstock look as cool as the rest of the guitar !

I was thinking about changing the tuners for the same kind of standard vintage style split-shaft tuners, but with black buttons, to match the pickup covers and knobs. I don't really understand what I'm looking for here, does anyone know if this even exist ? I guess it would be black buttons, like the white ones you see on other Fenders but black, or maybe black metal buttons ? Or mixing and matching a nickel set and a black set ?

I also don't really like the bent metal string tree, I always thought those looked cheap and cruddy. I could go the vintage-er way and get a round string tree to get more into the fifties theme, but I have the impression that it would be less effective, so maybe do the opposite and get a Dynaguide, this way I could have something black on the Headstock !

And a last one : This guitar still doesn't have a logo. I'm not sure if I want to do the hassle of finding a good fender repro logo and trying to put it on correctly (never done that, don't have any idea what kind of lacquer I should use for that, etc...), but I'm also putting the idea out here, what kind of logo would suit a jazzmaster with a maple neck and a 50s strat headstock ? Maybe something like a nocaster logo?

Also, for silliness sake, here it is next to my other white guitar with maple neck and black parts :

[adamrobertt]

Stew Mac sells black tuner buttons https://www.stewmac.com/parts-and-hardw ... ner-knobs/

[Flurko]

Quick update : I finally upgraded the string tree to the Dynaguide thingy I linked upthread, mostly because I disliked the cheap bent metal look of the og Fender one on the otherwise empty headstock, and a store I was buying stuff from had one in stock. I also have some black tele saddles in the mail to replace the worn brass/bronze plated ones, just to add a touch more of black-on-silver that's already going on with this guitar.

The bridge pickup had stopped working once again the other day so I tried to put back a humbucker in the bridge position, as I'm now playing in a grindcore* (long story) band, but it looks like it's working well out of the guitar so it will come back right in before I install my new strings, mostly because I like to keep this guitar in a "normal" jazzmaster configuration.

BTW the bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan SJM-2 Hot For Jazzmaster, reading around 15k, but it's always been very quiet compared to the bullock neck pickup, I really need to measure this one, this seems kinda weird to me. I have to ger the bridge pickup almost touching the strings and the neck pickup really low if I want to have a correct-ish balance.

*this guitar had previously starred in an ambient/post-rock band and more recently in a math/noise band, so why not

[Flurko]

Here's the headstock with the Dynaguide string tree, which is not a tree anymore :



I like the no logo look, but I'm still thinking about klusons with black button, I reckon the easiest way would be to buy ones with white plastic buttons, remove them and replace them with the black buttons linked earlier in the thread.

The headstock being from a strat, it's too small for a classic JM logo but a duo-sonic style one would be cool, or a nocaster logo with only "fender", it's still a fender neck on a fender body so it wouldn't bother me.

Sidenote : I just changed string gauge to suit the new band and tuning, and realized after 10+ years of owning the guitar that I need to buy a special allen key for it, as it's in 3/16" from what I can read online, being a MIM strat neck, and something like this is basically impossible to find in a normal store here, because we are logical people who use metric in these parts

[garyptaszek]

I like the no logo look tbh. I have a parts tele with a toasted maple neck with no finish or logo and I think it looks pretty swish.
I dig that string tree, looks pretty interesting I've not seen one like it before.

[Flurko]

I realized I didn't post an update about the new saddles.
They're black, they look cool, everything feels and sounds the same as before, and with the tension of two strings per saddle the gaps between them isn't an issue (yet?)



Also, they survived a few hours of grindcore riffs, so I think they're up to the task.

[skeletonpower]

Cheers to playing grindcore on a JM. I love that shit.

[Flurko]

After a few years the grey aluminium pickguard look is starting to bother me a bit, so I finally caved in and threw some spare cash Reverb's way to order what I wanted all along, a black anodized aluminum PG !
It might be time to get this guitar back to a luthier, it's been 8 years since someone who knows what they're doing has looked into it and there are still some gremlins in the neck and the electronics.
I'm still torn about replacing the bridge pickup with a humbucker, I've ordered no-holes covers just in case but if I do that I'll have to decide a way to use the rythm circuit for parallel/series/coil split and other silliness..

[Flurko]

I had this guitar at the local well-recommended shop for a setup, installation of a black anodized pickguard and a look at the buzzing electronics, and it has ballooned up to a full rewiring.. From what the guy told me my soldering job led to some solder joints breaking when lifting/putting back the pickguard, and I had the choice between picking it up with a great setup but still faulty electronics or to double the agreed upon price to rewire everything properly. My wife had to convince me to spend the extra money and call him back to redo everything nicely, as I will forget the extra money spent, opposed to being disappointed everytime I plug this beautiful thing in and it doesn't work as expected.
I'm glad the tech agrees on jazzmaster electronics being such a pain to work on, at least he's being paid to do it . I understand his frustration of doing a great setup regarding action, neck angle etc. only to have to lift the pickguard again because the last screw caused the whole thing to short.

[Flurko]

It's back and it's great !

[Flurko]

More pictures with a good light:






I'm really glad to have gone back to the black pickguard, the black anodized aluminium is what I wanted to do for a while, It might be finished for now. The setup is great and the shop redid the wiring, I'm glad to never open this up again, I absolutely hated taking this guitar apart to work on it
Now to try it loud in a band context soon!