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Fender Jaguars
- Thread starter J03YW
- Start date
A Bt7 bass extender will fit your nickel machineheads and its a perfect Hb7 replacement
Koto body is incredibly resonant (it's an african rainy forest Tekwood) neck fit and finish looks really Geddy Leeish and P/J passive setup is good for almost everything and very versatile.
Deluxe active/passive Jaguar is great, but you gotta be good at sonic setups and pedalboards or widely use compressor... quality and value are there, and so is the hum
Cheers,
Wallace
Koto body is incredibly resonant (it's an african rainy forest Tekwood) neck fit and finish looks really Geddy Leeish and P/J passive setup is good for almost everything and very versatile.
Deluxe active/passive Jaguar is great, but you gotta be good at sonic setups and pedalboards or widely use compressor... quality and value are there, and so is the hum
Cheers,
Wallace
I saw him at the Carolina Rebellion and his tone was killer. I remember thinking how much I liked the feel of one in a store last year.
I bought one and returned it due to neck dive. I made attempts to rectify it, but I couldn't in the 30 days I had before it was non-returnable. Other than the neck dive, I had no complaints about the tone, playability, or quality of build whatsoever. I really regret that it had that issue.
A Fender Jag was in my sights when along came a pair of Squier Jags on sale I couldn't resist snapping up. Both black, one P/J the other the HB. A good strap is enough to combat my two's subtle neck dive, hoping it will be eliminated with a set of lightweight Hipshot replacement tuners. Fairly light, the P/J is 8.5 lbs, the HB is 9.2 lbs, IIRC. Don't gig 'em yet, I first need to learn how to play 'em. I still plan to get a MIJ Fender Jag in future.
Maybe check out the Squier HB if you want a humbucker and active electronics.
Maybe check out the Squier HB if you want a humbucker and active electronics.
Use the search feature.
There are lots of threads on all the different Jaguars already.
You're welcome!
My MIJ Deluxe Jag is one of the best instruments I've ever played, I'm really satisfied with it. There's not much of a Hum problem, and if you are playing metal, that shouldn't be a big deal, since your standard metal guitar player will hiss the piss out of you with OD.
BUT, the active electronics are just boost and no cut, so it'll take some time to adjust. I turn them on on the refrain to (guessed it?) boost my bass. Requires a bit of practice.
Neck dive is not an issue with the right strap.
BUT, the active electronics are just boost and no cut, so it'll take some time to adjust. I turn them on on the refrain to (guessed it?) boost my bass. Requires a bit of practice.
Neck dive is not an issue with the right strap.
I have a 2004 MIJ Deluxe model in Hot Rod Red. It was one of the very first and they were intended for 2005 release. I love everything about it. Looks, tone, action, Versatility. I could use it for any Genre of music. I love jamming to Rush and Yes with it because it so easily gets "The Sound" I want. No real Hum to speak of but I am getting some copper foil for good measure.
That's a total waste of time and money.
The shielding is OK (copper foil will not improve it), but it has some discontinuities, usually between the upper cavity and the switchplate. It's a five-minute fix. Meter everything for continuity and you're done. Beyond that, there's nothing you can do to reduce the noise except bypass the active circuit, which I suggest. There's also frequently battery contact noise because of the Mickey Mouse way the battery connects (or doesn't, actually) and develops oxide bridging over time. :scowl:
Attending to those two faults reduced the noise in mine out of the box by 90%, at least, but it's still not a quiet rig.
At the end of the day, the original Jaguar is just a funny-looking Jazz with crappy ceramic pickups, an excess of crappy active electronics and some neck dive.
The interesting thing is that (IIRC) in all that mess there's actually the capability for passive individually switched pickups, avoiding the V/V/T problems of a straight Jazz.
If I were going to use mine, I'd just get a better set of pickups and run it like that.
I was probably going to just start with the "Missed" sections of factory shielding. No neck dive on mine and I love its' sound. Even passive it's got massive output. Maybe the newer ones got different p'ups but my '04 kills. Plus the neck is to die for. But I realize it's all a matter of taste/opinion. I'm going to use mine to rehearse tonight but use my Ric for next Fridays show.That's a total waste of time and money.
The shielding is OK (copper foil will not improve it), but it has some discontinuities, usually between the upper cavity and the switchplate. It's a five-minute fix. Meter everything for continuity and you're done. Beyond that, there's nothing you can do to reduce the noise except bypass the active circuit, which I suggest. There's also frequently battery contact noise because of the Mickey Mouse way the battery connects (or doesn't, actually) and develops oxide bridging over time. :scowl:
Attending to those two faults reduced the noise in mine out of the box by 90%, at least, but it's still not a quiet rig.
At the end of the day, the original Jaguar is just a funny-looking Jazz with crappy ceramic pickups, an excess of crappy active electronics and some neck dive.
The interesting thing is that (IIRC) in all that mess there's actually the capability for passive individually switched pickups, avoiding the V/V/T problems of a straight Jazz.
If I were going to use mine, I'd just get a better set of pickups and run it like that.
This is why it's hard to recommend basses on-line. For every person who like a certain bass, there's another that doesn't like it. There's even some loonies running around that don't like Rickenbackers.
Gerry
When you do that, you're finished. As long as it all has connectivity and coverage, it's done. From the factory, it didn't.
Going beyond that, you're wasting your time to no advantage.
I get really frustrated listening to all the shielding obsession on gear forums because it's mostly pure nonsense, especially the bubba fascination with copper foil and slug tape, watertight soldered seams, etc., etc.
More magical thinking...like magic tone bleeder caps, magic cables, magic wire, magic pots.
If you want to do shielding or repair, do it like electronics professionals do: Use gummed aluminum foil tape (just like from the hardware store) and a foil splicing tool:
...or a substitute. Or, if you're made out of money, use conductive paint. Continuity matters, high conductivity doesn't. Even if it did, aluminum is as conductive as copper.
To repair my Jaguar, I took off the upper switchplate and lifted an edge of the pickguard, then cut a 1/2" strip of aluminum tape and ran it from under the pickguard (where it touched the aluminum tape on the back of it) and over into the switchplate cavity, where I stuck it to the conductive paint. I used the splicer to permanently bond the foil to the paint, metered the formerly isolated cavity paint for connectivity to common all over the bass, then buttoned it up.
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Done. A five-minute job. After reseating the battery, almost all of the noise was gone -- but it's just an inherently noisy circuit, like most actives, only a little worse. It's not ESI, it's circuit noise.
No amount of additional shielding rigmarole would have done an iota more.
The splicer is just a tiny wheel with lots of tapered, needle-sharp teeth on the end of a shaft. Overlap foil tape and run the splicer over the seam and the foil is permanently bonded electrically. Works amazingly well. I used them frequently when I was a full-time electronics tech.
Yep, that's a ceramic. Cheap 'n' loud, not much subtlety. I've never really understood the obsession with high-output bass pickups, though. That's what the gain knob is for on the amp, right? What difference does it make if you drive the preamp to clipping with the knob at 4 or at 8?
I don't get it.
Well, I never would have imagined it, but maybe the BAII has a purpose in the universe after all.
After this discussion I found my Jaguar after some digging, wanting to verify something I said.
In the process, I made a couple of discoveries.
One, mine weighs a ton and thus doesn't have neckdive to speak of (no matter what, the bass I order will always turn out to be the heaviest one of its kind ever made
).
The other thing is that I accidentally located a HUGE and easily remediable source of circuit noise in the wiring itself.
I don't understand the cause, as I've never seen anything like it before in over forty years of working on basses, but simply by moving some wiring within the upper switch cavity, I eliminated a ton of generated static and circuit noise.
If I ever get it figured out I'll make a dedicated thread about it.
In the process, I made a couple of discoveries.
One, mine weighs a ton and thus doesn't have neckdive to speak of (no matter what, the bass I order will always turn out to be the heaviest one of its kind ever made
).The other thing is that I accidentally located a HUGE and easily remediable source of circuit noise in the wiring itself.
I don't understand the cause, as I've never seen anything like it before in over forty years of working on basses, but simply by moving some wiring within the upper switch cavity, I eliminated a ton of generated static and circuit noise.
If I ever get it figured out I'll make a dedicated thread about it.
