Jagmaster Project - Suggestions and advice

[Moose]

So a couple months ago I bought this Jagmaster body off ebay, it came literally as in the picture with a strat trem, pickguard, pots, and switch. Nothing else.



It's a Jagmaster Mark II body, at 25.5" scale. It was painted surf green by the previous owner, as he was testing out his nitrocellulose spray painting skillz.


About the only thing I've decided for definite on it is that A) I want it to be pretty streamlined in terms of controls and B) that the bridge pickup will be a humbucker and the neck will be a P90 or Jazzmaster pickup.


But this brings it's own questions:
-P90 or Jazzmaster? It's an alder body, and I really want to avoid a muddy sound in the neck position. Plus, I don't know which sounds better when combined with a humbucker?
-If I decide to coil-split the humbucker, should I have the neck pickup as RWRP, so that it would be hum-cancelling when combined with the bridge? Or is this irrelevant and I should go with a normal neck pup?
-In terms of switching, is it possible to wire up a five way blade style switch for a variety of options with only two pickups?
E.g. 1=Humbucker in series, 2= Humbucker in parallel, 3= Humbucker (series) + neck, 4= Humbucker Parallel + neck, 5= Neck only (or whatever, I'm open to suggestions)


I'm also debating what kind of neck to go with, whether to go with a maple or a rosewood fretboard. Currently I have three electric guitars, all with rosewood fretboards, so I wonder if maybe I should go for a maple fretboard so that I have some variety in the group? I know that maple fretboards are considered "snappier" than rosewood, but I don't know how much overall difference this makes to the sound. But I might just leave this until I'm at the stage where I'm looking at buying a neck, and go by what I can get that's available. I'd love to have a reverse headstock on it though, I know that much


Trem: By the looks of thing, this seems to be a really nice trem. Rather than having the 6 screws going into the body, this one has 2 pivot points going into ferrules. But at the same time, I don't really use a trem. At all. Debating whether or not to fill in the trem cavity and instead either put a toploader hardtail on it, or even to go with fitting a Gibby-style tuneomatic bridge with a stop-tail. I've looked at some Jaguars & Jazzmasters with Bigsby trems, and decided that it just doesn't look right to my eyes.

Finish: Currently still debating this. What I do know is that I really want this to be a beautiful guitar, not like my military-beast-strat-thing. I'm thinking along the lines of having it in bright orange gloss for the body, with a light (ish) blue pickguard. Or alternatively, having a black pickguard with some offset white stripes. Unless anyone can persuade me towards different colour choices?

Plus, I'm thinking chickenhead knobs because fuckyea Thinking I might put in one of those no-load tone knobs so that I can remove the tone control from the circuit if I wish too.




Soooo yeah. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Advice? Criticisms? Over-whelming disgust? I'm all ears!

[skullservant]

Dude maple neck all the way

[Moose]

Yeah? I am pretty tempted, as I haven't got anything with a maple neck as yet and it'd be nice to have something different to my current guitars!

Additionally, did some hunting and found this on the Dimarzio website:

http://www.dimarzio.com/sites/default/f ... ep1112.pdf

A wiring diagram for one Humbucker, one single coil, 1 volume, 1 tone, set up with a five way switch for Neck, Bridge Split & Neck, Bridge & Neck, Bridge Parallel, Bridge.

Seems like a good setup to me, and it advises the neck pickup will need to be reverse polarity! So that's part of my stuff sorted



Back to the neck, do you prefer maple over rosewood? If so, how come?

I know I could google this stuff, but I'd rather know the viewpoint from an individual rather than a piece written for a guitar magazine/blog

[skullservant]

That's an awesome wiring setup! That would be really diverse, I've never seen anything like that before.

I started out with rosewood/ebony fretboards, but my first experience with maple was when I had my T60 a few years ago and I've just generally come to like maple a little bit more. It's a little smoother to me when playing, ie the surface of it. It's a little brighter than rosewood/ebony, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all

[Moose]

From what I can gather, the Dimarzio Multipole EP1112 yadda yadda yadda switch is exactly the same as the Fender 5-way Super Switch, looks like you can achieve looooads with it once you know how it works.


.....So I guess I better figure out how it works



And cool, fair enough. I think given that I only have experience of rosewood, that's reason enough to try out maple! But thanks for the input, I reckon maple is the way to go on this

[Moose]

As a brief update, I've made my mind up on the bridge.


Inspired by some of the offset models I've seen at Creston Guitars, I think going with a toploading hardtail is the way to go.

Which is also far less hassle than trying to fit a tuneomatic bridge or alternative type of vibrato on it. I can always sell the old bridge or keep it for a future project.



In terms of pickups, previously I've always used Seymour Duncans. However I want to try out other pickup manufacturers, I was wondering if anyone had any experience of pickups by Lollar or Bareknuckle? I already know I'm not going with Lace as they are so damn difficult to get over here.

Tempted by Bareknuckle pickups especially, plus they're made in my home county!


If anyone else wants to chip in with other pickup manufacturers to look out for, let me know Basically just looking for a humbucker and a P90/Jazzmaster pickup!

[skullservant]

If you need a cut off tele plate, let me know!

[Moose]

....Now that's a good shout.


Not too sure though....how do the three-saddle bridges compare to six-saddle ones in terms of intonating/keeping in tune, etc?

This is assuming the one you have is a three saddle haha.

[skullservant]

Yeah it's a 3 saddle. I really don't have the intonation problems that a lot of people seem to with 3 saddle bridges. It's all about getting the height right, and then intonating from there. I've not had any issues!

[Moose]

Awesome, I'll look into em a bit more and go from there, but thanks man!



On the subject, I don't suppose you have any tips/suggestions/help resources in regards to fitting a hardtail bridge? I mean in terms of getting it in the right position and so on

[skullservant]

Let me go grab a picture of my Stratoblaster. I moved from one of the bridges that is in your picture to a hardtail bridge, and just drilled it where it would have been if it was the previous bridge, if that makes sense.

[skullservant]

So what I did was take note of where the trem block was on the old bridge, and where the strings would have gone through the saddles. Then I just laid the new bridge over top of where that would be, and drilled the holes. I also installed a block of wood on the back where the old trem route was so that the mounting screws would have something to go into more than the 1/4" piece of wood where the old trem was.

[Moose]

I swear I will never get tired of pics of your stratoblaster So much awesome.



I was hoping I could do it that way but I wasn't sure, brilliant! Thanks a lot for your help and advice Skully, really appreciate it

[skullservant]

Think I might break it out tonight and play it, such a crazy guitar.

And no problem man. I'd just make sure of the following:

-There is enough wood in the old route that when you drill in the new bridge that the screws have something to sink into
-The bridge is straight (duh, but it happened to me, was off a few degrees)
-The new saddles sit where the old ones would have

[Moose]

I'm going to try and fill the old rout as cleanly as possible, I came across a great bit of advice on project guitar.com. They suggested that once the block has been glued in and has dried, to lightly dremel away the edges where the new wood is, and then add in wood filler. This way, when doing the finish it helps to stop the lines from showing through.

And yeah, I'm going to make absolutely certain that the bridge is straight, gonna have to wait till I have a neck on it, but it's worth it to make sure it's done right.


What I might do to make sure the saddles are in the right place is to put strings on it with the current bridge in place, get the intonation set, and then try to replicate those positions on the toploader bridge. I think that's probably the best way of doing it with minimal issues