fender blacktop jazzmaster

[thetragichero]

think i'll pick one of these up beginning of next month and give it a simple shielding/rewire job
already have a gfs dream 180 humbucker and hot jazzmaster single coil on the way
i figure i'll wire the single coil out of phase since otherwise the middle position would be a bit useless to me

any experience with the dream 180? would a coil split or intrapickup series/parallel be more useful (in general, i find coil splits for standard humbuckers fairly useless)

250k volume 500k tone pot?

thanks in advance for any suggestions

[ChristoMephisto]

If you find coil tapping useless, go with your other option, local parallel.
Run some wires out of the guitar from the pup and try the different combos.

You may find humbuckers muddy with 250k pots...

[thetragichero]

okay so this thing never turned out how i wanted it to, which i suppose is fine since i've got some insight on how to make it more functional....
i will be purchasing a blank tortoise pickguard from ebay china and replacing the rosewood fingerboard neck with an all maple. enough with aesthetics...
this is what the guard looks like now:


volume will be approximately where the selector switch is now for easy "swell" access and will be push/pull phase switch for neck pickup. output jack will be move into a tele-like position on the side so that i have room for three pots! first from bridge will be a spin-a-split for the bridge 'bucker instead of a tone pot, push/pull series/parallel switch (pot is useless in parallel mode). next two will be the PTB/peavey T-60esque thang with bass pot and then treble pot where the jack currently is. somewhere on the upper horn i will have the pickup selector switch, which is an older model "freeway" switch. could've gotten by with a standard LP-style but this is what i have so i decided the second set of 3 would cut the volume and PTB pots out of the circuit for a straight-to-jack kinda thang like i have on my tele.

using 1M pots because these overwound pickups were a little muddy with the 250k/500k that are currently in there. plus that's mostly what jazzmasters came with anyway. some of the pot/cap values will be run through guitarfreak once i transfer it from my phone to an actual pc.

here is how the freeway works:




and here is the neatest copy i could make of what i think will work (the original modules were drawn on the back of an envelope while riding to and fro an orchid show, so the relatively straight lines and multiple colors make it a lot more understandable to me):




open to any suggestions, critiques, etc. i am in the middle of an early-than-expected bathroom remodel (happens when you step through a rotten subfloor...) in my "free" time, so this project is at least a month out.
hey, figuring out how to put it all together was fun!

[newey]

Traj-

Good to hear from you again! I've eyed those Blacktop Jazzmasters for a while, so I'm envious. (But I bought a reissue Duo-Sonic, which I love, so anyway . . .)

I couldn't tell if it was a question or not- Do you need someone to vet the diagram? If so, I'll give it a gander in the next day or so, I'm 5 minutes from bed at the moment.

[thetragichero]

yes, amid my thread necromancy was a desire for my work to be double checked

[newey]

In order to double check it, I'll need a "truth table", at least for the freeway settings.

[thetragichero]

my thought for the freeway was standard lp-style three-way (N, N + B, B), with 4 5 6 bypassing the volume and two tone pots (I'm considering the spin-a-split as part of the humbucker itself instead of as a tone pot).

[newey]

OK, your diagram checks out. What confused me was that the "std." settings (N, N+B, B) are positions 4, 5 and 6, and the pot-bypass settings are 1,2 and 3. Which doesn't really matter since you can always rotate the switch when you install it IRL.

[thetragichero]

besides the fact that that's how i was able to wrap my mind around doing it (probably thereal reason with the rest being justification), i figured that the "solo switch" would be more natural to engage by flicking towards the neck than by pulling back towards me

thank you for the verify! now to play with values in guitarfreak and start sourcing parts...

[thetragichero]

finished this Monday but never photographed it
replaced the bridge with a $20 all parts roller tune-o-matic bridge. so far i like it. neck pickup is the original Duncan designed one a plug so that i can see whether i like ìt more than the overwound gfs. replaced bridge ceramic mag with Alnico9. this guitar is bright now. 250k vol 500k spin-a-split 1M tone 1M bass
think i wired the bridge pickup out of phase (forgot i rewired from gfs comes to Duncan colors) so whenever i swap neck pickup I'll reverse its leads. i think this will mainly be for more atmospheric stuff so the bass cut control cleans up the delay repeats
I'm happy ☺