Fender Ultra Jazzmaster: Love the guitar- HATE the pickups. Suggestions welcome

[Tribute2Johnny]

Never be afraid to change the pickups on a guitar that you otherwise love. If the look and feel of the guitar are right, the tone needs to be right, too.

While I haven't installed mine yet, I've got some Kinman Jazzmaster pickups on the way. If you want it to be noiseless and sound good, that's what I'd go for (and I did!).

I'd love some thoughts on those Kinman Jazzy pups whenever you get around to it for sure!

[Tribute2Johnny]

Soooooo I bought some Kinmans.

Sounded as bad in the Ultra wiring harness as the Fender noiseless pickups were; but with more volume.
So I did what most would think is dumb: swapped the Kinmans installed from the Ultra into the '11 Squier JMascis that had the Fender Vintage 65 pickups.

Both sound great, but not ideal. It's dumb. Just kind sad having a 'cheap' Squier outfitted with expensive parts.
There is a good chance that I'll try to get a new wiring harness for the Ultra that is a little more standard in form and put the Kinmans in there and then just shelve the whole original Ultra harness with the original pickups down the road.

Pretty sure the Ultra's whole wiring scheme is a detriment to the sound more than just the pickups in there.

[HarlowTheFish]

The Ultra's got 250k pots all 'round, so anything that you're used to hearing through 500k, or the standard JM 1M pots, is gonna sound muffled and kinda crap. The worst part is, I'm pretty sure they just did that because there's no 1M S1 pots, and it's pretty much useless.

Swap in some 1M pots and try out the Ultra pickups, they might be fine when they're not being kneecapped by the electronics.

[Norrin Radd]

The Ultra's got 250k pots all 'round, so anything that you're used to hearing through 500k, or the standard JM 1M pots, is gonna sound muffled and kinda crap. The worst part is, I'm pretty sure they just did that because there's no 1M S1 pots, and it's pretty much useless.

Swap in some 1M pots and try out the Ultra pickups, they might be fine when they're not being kneecapped by the electronics.

I think this is a great suggestion and might be the core of the issue. I wold have just upvoted, but we can't do that here!

[iany]

I reckon its the pickups they sound dead to me. I don't think changing the electronics will solve this but I may be wrong.
Maybe they suppressed the noise so much that they've "clipped" too much of the harmonics........
If you do change the pots and it solves the problem then let me know.
I'm intending to order some from Jamie in Manchester, but he's snowed under at the mo so it'll be some time.
Also cant decide which ones ie:
Vintage 58's
Vintage 58"s with a little more oomph or the4 dark ones.
Also theres hum buckers and p90's there all drop in replacements.
I'm thinking the vintage 58's with a bit more oomph.

[timtam]

The Ultra's circuit is complex for a guitar - schematic below. But the tone pots are "no load" so when set to 10 and the switches set for parallel/in-phase, there is little of the wiring actually "in circuit". However the best test of the sound of the pickups themselves would be to wire them direct to the output in turn, or direct to the master volume if you want to take its effect on the resonant peak into account.



https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... 7_2020.pdf

[artmem]

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Before you jump in the pickup swapping wagon, these are the steps to fix tone:

-Adjust pickup heights up/down and tilt for bass/treble (free). Generally lower gives better tone and if you want more volume then turn the amp louder.
-Measure actual volume and tone pots and swap those for higher (brighter) or lower (darker) measured replacements. Pots have a 20% tolerance range and it matters. ($10 kind of range)
-Swap tone caps for smaller (brighter/more sparkle) or higher (smoother/darker) uF. They have a 10% range but the meters to measure them are not common in most utility rooms/garages. ($2 kind of range)
-If really muddy then use a capacitor in series with the hot lead of the muddy pickup.
-Swap pickups and go back to the top of the list. ($200 kind of range).

Rarely do you need to go beyond the first two steps to fix most issues.

The controls matter and color the tone even when the knobs are 'dimed'.

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This is the clearest explanation of what swapping pots and caps can change. Thanks.

[graceless]

Good god, the controls for this thing are just absurdly complicated

[atadair]

If anyone winds up actually performing this mod (replacing Ultra stock pickups with any of the vintage ones without losing tonal options nor replacing the entire harness) please post here what method you used! I would love to take mine to a tech with some guidepost instructions and see if we can get it done! Thank you!

[Embenny]

Never be afraid to change the pickups on a guitar that you otherwise love. If the look and feel of the guitar are right, the tone needs to be right, too.

While I haven't installed mine yet, I've got some Kinman Jazzmaster pickups on the way. If you want it to be noiseless and sound good, that's what I'd go for (and I did!).

I'd love some thoughts on those Kinman Jazzy pups whenever you get around to it for sure!

Totally forgot about this post until the thread was just bumped.

FYI, mine are the "fatmaster" model, the middle of the three they offer in terms of output and inductance.

It's definitely thicker than a vintage-wind JM, but has plenty of brightness and clarity. I've got two sets of Kinmans now (one jag, one JM), and they both really nail everything I like about single coil pickups. They don't have the compressed, blunted feel of a humbucker. I don't feel like I'm playing something other than single coils. They just sound like nice single coils, but don't hum.

Personally, I like low output pickups, so I probably have gone with the Surfmasters if I was ordering them, but I got these used off a friend on the board, and the price difference outweighed my minor preference for low output.

I definitely don't feel the need to swap them out for the surfmasters, or anything else for that matter. I've arrived at the conclusion that Kinman is my endpoint in the search for noiseless single coils, at least for offsets since nobody does anything like these in JM/Jag formats.

For strat/tele form factor, I'm a diehard Wilde fan. That's Bill Lawrence's company, wound by his daughter Shannon and sold by his widow, Becky, and not to be confused with the company "Bill Lawrence USA," which is run by his old business partner who split from him with a lot of bad blood in the 80's. Those "BL USA" pickups are based on his old designs that he continued to refine for decades, and aren't built to his standards.

I'd probably love Kinman's strat pickups too, but Shannon and Becky are still making Bill's noiseless pickups for $60 each with American labour and overhead, while Kinmans are $125 each despite lower overhead in the Phillippines. Bill's pickups and design philosophy are still innovative nearly 10 years after his passing. He dealt in hard and soft magnetic cores, inductance, capacitance, resonant frequencies, and noise rejection rather than clinging to marketing based on which year of vintage pickup we're pretending to sound like.

But, he designed his pickups while strat, tele, and PAF form factors covered pretty much all the bases you needed to as an aftermarket winder. Kinman is cut from a similar cloth in terms of innovation, and offers offset form factors, so I'm happy to buy his pickups when Bill's don't fit the guitar/project. They're just pricy.

[Emil_Kodar]

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Before you jump in the pickup swapping wagon, these are the steps to fix tone:

-Adjust pickup heights up/down and tilt for bass/treble (free). Generally lower gives better tone and if you want more volume then turn the amp louder.

Just Re-Bump this post.

Only tilting pickups, a good configuration (at my ears similar to vintage in clean, hotter in distorsion ):

NECK: 2.3mm - 2.1mm
BRIDGE: 2.2mm - 1.7mm

and tone pots at max.

A lot telecaster-ique, but quite vintage-like.

[Us3rNameUndefined]

I'm surprised! I have the Ultra JM (Cobra blue) and love the tone. (And the guitar.)

My other guitars are a Ric 360 with the high gains and an LP Special with P-90s.

I'm curious as to what amp you'r using? Amp of course drastically effects tone.

I'm sure you guys are way more knowledgeable and experienced than me regarding gear, but I am a tone chaser; I like to use an overdriven lil' 5 watt Fender Vibrochamp and I feel like the guitar and amp were made for eachother...

[Emil_Kodar]

A Marshall AVT 50, and a Blues Junior.
At now my Ultra is an UltraTVL: body and neck from Ultra, and harness and Pickups from a JM TVL.