NBD - Squier Jazz Fretless 5 Vintage Modified Modified

[tauzero]

I know I said I'd never buy another Fender or Squier. A man can change his mind, can't he?

 

Saw this 5-string Jazz defret with a humbucker pickup in the bridge position and went and had a look at it. Very nice neck (unlike my Standard Precision Special V from almost 20 years ago), great defret job, and a switchable humbucker - series, parallel, and single coil (I assume). Humbucker installation wasn't perfect but the slight waywardness of the rout is imperceptible from any distance. There's a couple of minor dings to the lacquer but nothing much. The owner was suffering from arthritis and had to sell the bass not long after buying it.

 

It came reasonably set up, I lowered the strings a bit more and put straplocks on and so far that's it. The humbucker isn't ideal as it's for a Ray5 or similar with the narrower string spacing but I don't feel any great urgency to replace it. Photos from original listing.

 

 

Control plate with 3-way toggle switch

 

 

You can see the serrations from the fret tangs here, but there's no tear-out and the unfretboard is lovely and smooth

 

 

Pickup rout for the humbucker isn't perfect but it's not bad. I think I could do with replacing the pickup screws as some of the heads are a little chewed up.

 

[tauzero]

PS. The bridge pickup is 2cm closer to the bridge than a Ray5 pickup is to its bridge, so it's not a perfect emulation of a Ray plus a Jazz. There's quite a variety of sounds to be had from it though.

[tauzero]

Further to this: the Warman pickup was for the narrower string spacing of a Ray5 (and coincidentally I have a Ray5 it can go onto). I found an Aguilar AG-5M for a very reasonable price, and installed that and a blend pot (dual MN500k), and it produced sound entirely as planned and not (as I was half expecting, given my rate of success with electronics projects of late) messages from Alpha Centauri at one end of the pot's travel and whalesong at the other.

 

And while I was there, as the original control plate has been drilled for a parallel/series/single coil switch and I wasn't bothering with that with the Aguilar (which is wired in parallel), I got a rather pretty replacement. Engraved and multicoloured. Now what do I do about that scratchplate?

 

[HeadlessBassist]

That looks like a fantastic project. What does the CV Maple Jazz sound like as a HS? Loving the control plate too.

[andruca]

I LIKE IT!

 

Does that Aguilar have 4 wires? I still think that bass would give you much more if coil tapped.

 

Just got back my Ibanez ATK 405 (MIK, MM+J too) and I've yet to find a bass that's better at both the all open Jazz tone and the Musicman tone (with some EQing). FYI, the ATK pickup is about 1cm closer to the bridge than a Musicman's.

 

IME, if you have a humbucker combined with a single coil you NEED a coil tap. I.e., I'm really surprised Sire didn't think of a coil tap for the humbuckers in Z series basses. A deal breaker for me (and the reason why Z7s can't do a plain Jazz tone).

 

I'll be following. I'd love to hear how your VMM sounds just playing with the VVT and that humbucker fixed in series 👍

Edited Wednesday at 20:02 by andruca

[tauzero]

The Aguilar does have four wires, sort of. There are four available solder pads, so I could unsolder the wires and rewire them, but I don't think it's worth it for me. And having wired in a blend pot rather than VVT (as the need to control the volume simply is my major consideration), wiring the pickups in series would be a right headache.