thesegoupto11 said:
Hello.
I have a MIJ Jaguar that I want to upgrade. It is was bought fitted with 2 Humbuckers, which I plan to swap out for a pair of P90s. I'm also planning on upgrading all of the pots and switches.
As much as I love my Jag, I don't know too much about the electronics in it.
The P90s I want will fit in the Humbucker routs, but I'm not sure where to start with the pots. The current one have a bit of a dead spot, so they need replacing. I heard that 500k pots are best for Humbuckers, but I'm not sure if I should get 1 meg ones for the P90s. Any ideas?
There also seems to be a capacitor on the lower tone control. Will this need replacing along with the pots? I had all the wiring upgraded to silver wire previously, so this won't need touching.
Also, does anyone know where I can get hold of upgrades for the rhythm circuit "dial" volume/tone pots on the upper control panel?
Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Hey bud, here is some info for ya. 😀
Pickups: I believe Lollar or Novak might make a P90 style pickup that is humbucker setup. You could check their site. I know they make humbucker sized WRHB's so I wouldn't be suprised if they did P90's as well. 😀
Wiring: Angela.com and Guitarpartsresource.com will have the roller pots. Since you have a MIJ one, if you want to change the pots, but keep the rollers, you would want 6mm mini pots like the one in the link below.
http://guitarpartsresource.com/electrical_minipots.htm (EP-4990-000 1 meg linear taper mini pot for volume and EP-4992-000 50k linear taper mini pot for tone. MIJ use 6mm mini pots. If you want to use US CTS pots instead, you would need a different mounting bracket and rollers that would fit the different post size. I haven't seen much difference. I have guitars with Japanese pots and US ones. The capacitor and pot values to me make more of a difference. (As well as pickups.))
You don't need to replace the capacitor unless you want to. You can buy those at those two websites as well. For a Jaguar, the rollers normally have a 0.01 capacitor and the larger pots by the jack normally have a 0.01 capacitor as well. The treble boost switch normally has a 0.003 capacitor.
For pot values, you can try changing those out. (Oh and the main pots are also 6mm size posts, so if you replace them, go with that or they will be too big to fit through the holes. You could drill the holes bigger, but I would just stick to the 6mm size pots. The lower area on a Jag is normally a 1meg linear for volume and 1meg audio pot for tone.)
Normally for single coil guitars like strats, they use 250k pots. Humbucker guitars normally use 500k pots. Jaguar and Jazzmasters normally use 1meg pots. The higher the pot, the more bright or trebly it will sound. You could always try the P90s with what you have in there already and then change if needed. It should say on the back of the pot the value. If it is too bassy, go up in pot value. If it is too bright (some people would say shrill) drop it down. Pots aren't too expensive so it doesn't hurt to try something else. Also make sure pickup height is good so you get the best sound from your pickups. 😀 Normally I try to get the pickups about two stacked dimes away from strings when the strings are pressed down at the highest fret.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
