I understand the interaction, it’s not quite as robust as it was years ago.

I’m not as wild of a strummer so was in years past, but I would worry about accidentally hitting it. I take it, that hasn’t come up. I’m not sure if I would hit now, but back in the day. . . .

-Eric

New music!
https://thedesolatecoast.bandcamp.com/releases
Spotify

Also:
https://theverb.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theverbseattle/

Taifighter, what's that pickup on the previous version of your JM build? Looks unusual.

FWIW, I also play rather enthusiastically, and would be in danger of hitting that switch constantly. Happens quite a bit with my Yamaha SGV. Of course, the switch on that guitar is oriented more up/down rather than side to side, so that makes a difference.

Tai, where did that hard tail conversion plate come from?

This is a good resource to know about. $50 for a control plate is indeed pricey, but they've got so many options, and those can lead to so many new projects. I'm now tempted to do a 12 string Jaguar or Jazzmaster some day.

cirecc wrote:

I know I’m not Tai, but you can find lots of variations of that tailpiece on eBay and reverb. Also, you can check out Faction’s website where they have all sorts of jag/jazz plates for $50 each (unique but pricy).

https://store.factionguitars.com/

I have two long-scale Squier Jagmaster guitars in the classic Silver Sparkle finish. I've recently been having problems with the trem arms on them, just from 19 years of wear on a cheap zinc block that doesn't have a deep enough arm hole to take a tensioning spring.

The backstory: after about a year of trying to make my awful Yamaha ERG121S playable, I bought a new Jagmaster in 2003. My music teacher was devastated because in his words "you'll only destroy it like the last one". Well, since the MiC Squiers weren't total garbage, it's stayed barely touched - low-E tuner broke and was replaced like-for-like, it had decent pots and wiring installed, and a graphtech nut was eventually added - partly because the white nut was the only non-black plastic on the guitar.

The source of the new tuner was an identical 2003 Jagmaster I'd accidentally bought a few years later while on a lot of pain meds. This came with a dead neck pickup, and ended up my "workhorse" guitar with an ex-bridge pickup in the neck, a P-Rails in the bridge with 4-way switching on that, a GK2a and locking Sperzels to replace the one I'd "borrowed". Decided to start with that for the bridge repair since it's the "hackerbait" instrument, but when eyeing it up close, the GK was removed because it's not been used in years - the pickup was glued to the plate which is also badly dug into by picking, I never properly shielded it at all, the neck is factory shimmed with bits of plastic strapping (I measure ~0.75° now), the 3-way is going bad and there's a couple of bad burrs on two frets. So, we're going to do a bit of an overhaul - I won't be doing major fretwork but I'll clean up the bad two, do a plate swap and try to find a replacement 35mm block for a 2000's Squier 2-point trem. Here's some gore shots of the plate, bad trem block, excessive swimming-pool Jazzmaster body...

While I'm at this, I recently got my first new guitar in many years, and it had a couple of stylistic touches I thought might be nice to replicate on the modded Jagmaster.

Soooo, now this project has gotten expensive, because the white P-Rails sure are. I'm going to try for a matching pair this time, and I'm going to try to work out a clever switching system that lets me do the full four-way ("P90", "Strat", Series, Parallel) switching combo on both pickups independently - I don't think I'll manage it with two push-pulls but if I throw a couple of on-on-on micro toggles in there I can do p90-bucker-strat on the toggle, and reuse the existing push-pull pots for series/parallel when in the middle position. I am however annoyed no-one has made an effort to try and replicate the "humbucker-sized-P90" with a "humbucker-sized-jazzmaster". I'm sure it would be terribly inaccurate, but it would be fun to try a set of something like that in a Jagmaster.

Oh, and I'm still futzing around with amp builds.

Anyway, that's my week. How about y'all?

They who die with the fewest control knobs, win.

- "The Mysterious" Tqi.

I got some good things happening!
The amplifier and speaker cabinet getting a whole new makeover.
Will be posting a separate topic soon when done!