Modifications to my Squier jazz bass..ANyone hook up their Squiers??

I bought a used Affinity Jazz for $90 for the sole purpose of trying out different pickups. I put a set of Fender Select pickups in it along with a set of GHS Super Steels and it became my gigging bass. Sounds great and plays as good as I need it to. Everything else in stock.

 

Sure, I've worked over a few!

This is the first Squier Standard Jazz I've owned in this color configuration. At the time of this picture being taken, I'd swapped out the matte black pickguard for a Fender Black Pearl. Also, if you look carefully, you'll see I installed a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder in the neck position. I'd bought another SD-QP for the bridge position, only to find out the two pickups were identical in size.


Not-So-Pro-Tip: I've said it before, and I'll say it again…before they were discontinued, Squier Standards had deviated from the standardized "Fender footprint" in several ways. This includes, but is not limited to;

• Pickguard shape and hole positions
• Bridge position pickup route (needs a neck pup, but a little too small for a neck pup cover without a little "encouragement")
• Control plates (holes are too small for CTS pots…mini-pots only)
• Potentiometer route (some are too shallow for anything bigger than mini-pots)
• Neck heel (a little bigger than normal…too big to slip right into Mighty Mite neck pocket without sanding one or the other down)
• I'm sure there are more deviations, but I haven't found them yet.

The second one (I'd traded the first away) looks untouched, cosmetically speaking. However, I wanted to get a little bit of "The Thunder" back that I once had from a Classic Vibe Jazz. That, and I wanted to use some spare parts I had on hand;

• A pair of CV-J neck pups
• Hipshot BT7 Drop-D tuner (something I install on most of my basses)
• A high-mass bridge taken from a Fender Blacktop Jazz (SEE EDIT BELOW)
• Elixir Nanoweb 45-100 strings (at the suggestion of my local guitar tech, and they sound & feel great!)

Someday, I might have some extra routing done to convert it to a P/J configuration using a Blacktop Jazz pickguard as a template. But for now, I like it just fine as a slightly-modified travel/beater bass.

Speaking of said Classic Vibe Jazz; Personally, I am no fan of photo-tort pickguards. I know, I know…heresy to some 'round these parts, but until they produce an actually-transluscent tortoise-shell guard (the way actual, freakin' tortoise-shell looks like, dammit!), count me out. So, for the one I had a little ways back, I bought a black/white/black Fender guard off the rack from my local Guitar Center. It was meant for the American-made models, what with the notch for truss-rod adjustment, but I figured, "What the Hell! It'll still look better than that God-awful-tort!!" Fun fact is, it went on with 95% accuracy, meaning only one screw had to be angled a little bit, but still fit just fine.



One other thing, although not a full-on Squier, I bought a neck harvested from a Vintage Modified Jaguar. Specifically, the all-black, active P/J model with the two dual-knobs, fretboard inlays and a black, painted headstock. Add in some black hardware and another Drop-D tuner…and violá!




EDIT: I put the original, vintage-style bridge back on the Squier Standard Jazz for a number of reasons. Mainly, there wasn't any noticeable difference, or at least, not enough to really matter. Plus, only four of the five screw holes matched up and I didn't feel like "drilling & filling" the original holes. Besides, I may end up using the Blacktop hi-mass bridge on another project.

 

sounds like your girl is the brains of the operation, marry her !

 

You mentioned non-photo'd Tortie?

Get a blank from these guys: it's real swirl. They have both red and brown types:
http://www.eyguitarmusic.com/J-Bass-Pickguards_c_16.html
or
http://www.eyguitarmusic.com/Pickguards-Materials_c_18.html

I've bought from them. This is what I got (brown tortie)

 

They may swirl, but it's not nearly translucent enough to simulate true-tort. It's mostly opaque layers…as in, "light cannot pass through it". I can clearly see the black and white plastic layers underneath the top-most ply, even from the pic you posted. However, I should take this opportunity to clarify;

I would be interested in a tortoise-shell-like pickguard made to be fully translucent, just like actual, early 20th Century items made from genuine tortoise-shell. This is not to say, "I want genuine tortoise-shell." I believe it's illegal to produce, much like actual elephant tusk ivory. I talking about a layer of swirly, light-refractive, red & brown plastic that can allow a small amount of light to penetrate down into the surface, giving it an apparent depth of more than a single-ply of thin, photo-paper print.

Here's a good analogy…human skin. Despite what most people might think, human skin is actually translucent. That's why we see shifts in skin tone and pallor depending on health, mood, and etc. It's because we can see the flush of blood through the skin. If you take a person and cover them in opaque, skin-tone paint, they look unnatural…like a mannequin that just crawled out of the Uncanny Valley. Don't believe me? Watch any behind-the-scenes of a 3D-CGI animated film. Look carefully at the figures without the final skin render…creepy! [/ART-SCHOOL-LESSON]

Here's what kills me; Fender makes guitar picks out of translucent plastic. Now if they would just make a high-quality pickguard out of something like this…



…then I'd be interested. A thick layer of this stuff with a very thin, off-white/parchment layer underneath (to throw incoming light back at your eyes, while still concealing the routing and wiring below) would probably do the job nicely.

EDIT: Yep! Trading in true-tort is illegal and has been since 1947.

 

Your best bet then would be to buy a stack-load of acoustic guitar, self-adhesive blank tortie sheets, stick a few of them together, then fashion yourself a pickguard from that.

 

So from what I'm gathering here, any fender jazz pick guard would fit in a squire jazz bass? I'm about to buy a VM fretless and want to install a tortoise pg on it, thanks!

 

Took a VM Squier, swapped the pickups for Big Splits under custom covers, Nordy preamp, Hipshot A brass bridge, Sadowsky-style knobs, jack socket, did neck inserts, shielded the body cavity.
It was a blast and sounded great when it was all done.

 

Do a search for the "Tricked Out Squier Club", you'll find lots of examples.

 

Not every one is a perfect match, but the VM Fretless doesn't carry one, so all you'll need to do is make sure the neck pocket, pickup and control plate notch match up. Then you can "put the screws to it".

However, I've heard of some people using double-sided tape to hold a pickguard in place so they don't have to drill permanent holes in their bodies. So, if you decide you want to sell it, you can just take off the guard and polish off any residual adhesive.

 

Malak. Does the Hipshot BT7 drop in Squier vintage modified jazz bass?

 

The best I can say is, "Probably". The VM Jaguar neck pictured above is sporting a BT7, which was a very good fit.

To the best of my knowledge, Squire VM's use similar, if not the same, tuners as MIM Fenders. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for the Classic Vibes.

 

I'm hoping you still have the one with the black pearl pickguard!

 

I have three that needed nothing: J Johnston Sig Jazz, the Precision Five, and the Active Contemporary Jazz Five.

I did get the JJ with the idea of modifying the looks, so:

From this:


To this:


I always wondered why Fender rarely used that Strat style 'white pickguard, white pickups' look on a bass, I thought the JJ would be the perfect candidate. White pickguard and pickup covers, Aerodyne knobs, and used Fender Yosemite Jazz pickups. All day . . . .

As I said, none of the three NEEDED anything, I just wanted to customize the look of the JJ, and I like it a lot.

 

If you still have the neck, try adjusting the truss rod to bow it outward (opposite of what you usually see with a high action) and fill the fret slots with plastic wood filler. When the filler dries, sand it down flat. You should be okay. Hope this helps.

 

'Fraid not, JD. The one pictured above was traded away a very long time ago. However, it was for a good cause. I traded it for a Candy Apple Red, long-scale VM Jaguar which was promptly gifted to a friend's teenage daughter.

Some time later, I got an itch to get another Satin Pewter Metallic Squier Standard Jazz, which led to me having "The Three Amigos".



If this is starting to sound familiar, it should. After all, you owned that Squier Precision Bass Special for a little while.

But to bring things back on topic…

Since this thread started (all of seven years ago…yeesh! ) I had one particular mod performed upon that second Squier Standard Jazz. It was subtle…just a bit of a "haircut", really…but definitely worth the minor expense. I had my local Guitar Center tech do some additional routing for the bridge pickup slot. Now it can take a longer pickup in the bridge position.

 

Sure, I've sold quite a few nice basses.
As long as you still have some special ones, that's all that matters.