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My only other guitar now besides my SGV 800 is a
Squier Vista Jagmaster, which has a Seymour Duncan
Distortion pickup at the bridge (the stock pup is
gone). This is a great pickup for punk and rock 'n
roll but it simply sounds too dirty for my taste when
I'm trying to play surf and it also makes a horrible
squealing noise when plugged into my Premier tank.
The neck pickup's output is very low compared to the
bridge's and turning the two on together doesn't
really take away the dirtiness of the Distortion and
kind of sucks a lot of the bite out of the tone.
I don't want to change the stock configuration of the
guitar, but I would like to be able to get a cleaner
sound out of it. Does anybody use humbuckers and/or
have any suggestions?
Richard
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Hi Richard,
I was in the same boat as you. Before I was fully committed to surf
music, I bought a Squier Vista Super-Sonic, which is the sister
guitar to your Jagmaster. It has a weird reverse Jaguar body,
reverse headstock, blue sparkle finish, 2 humbuckers, and 2 volume
pots. I imagine this guitar was made at the height of the grunge
craze to give the kids a cheap offset-waist looking, lefty looking
(Cobain) guitar. I applaud Fender's efforts because maybe it saved a
few vintage Jaguars/Jazzmasters from getting the humbucker treatment
by grunge crazed kids.
In any event, I replaced the 2 volume pots with push/pull volume
pots, and then wired each switch on the pots to cut the humbucker in
half (some people call this coil tapping). Now I can get both
pickups in single coil mode, humbucker mode, or any combination in
between. Plus I like having two volume pots so you can blend the two
pickups together. It was a pretty easy mod (I am certainly no expert
and I did it myself over a 4 or 5 hour period late one Saturday
night).
This also worked out great because it doesn't change the appearance
of the guitar. At first I thought about just replacing the
humbuckers with single coils and be done with it. But then I
realized I would never, ever find a pickguard for that guitar in
that configuration, it would have to be custom made. I didn't want
to mess with that hassle.
BTW, if anyone wants to buy the original Atomic Humbuckers from that
guitar (I replaced them with clean Seymour Duncans) I'll give you a
good deal. :)
You don't see too many Super-Sonics around. There used to be a band
called "Johny and the Shamen", they were a Man or Astro-Man?
inspired band, and their guitar player played one. He replaced his
pickups with single coils and just left the original pickguard on,
so it looked kind of weird.
BN
--- In , Richard <errant_jedi@y...>
wrote:
> My only other guitar now besides my SGV 800 is a
> Squier Vista Jagmaster, which has a Seymour Duncan
> Distortion pickup at the bridge (the stock pup is
> gone). This is a great pickup for punk and rock 'n
> roll but it simply sounds too dirty for my taste when
> I'm trying to play surf and it also makes a horrible
> squealing noise when plugged into my Premier tank.
>
> The neck pickup's output is very low compared to the
> bridge's and turning the two on together doesn't
> really take away the dirtiness of the Distortion and
> kind of sucks a lot of the bite out of the tone.
>
> I don't want to change the stock configuration of the
> guitar, but I would like to be able to get a cleaner
> sound out of it. Does anybody use humbuckers and/or
> have any suggestions?
>
> Richard
Hi Richard,
I heard Brian Setzer playing his Gretch humbucker
guitar on the 2000 CD Vavroom. The track is called
"Drive like Lightnin Crash Like Thunder". It is a
very "surf-inspired" sound.
Thanks,
Jeremy Bays
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