MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I finally got around to recording a demo of these new pickups in my Jazzmaster.
I had never heard of Sunday Handwound until I read @jjjimi84 's Baritone Jazzmastery conversion build post.
After a wee bit of encouragement from @daeg I reached out to Tim at Sunday Handwound and chatted a bit before taking a chance on a set of his pickups.
Tim's a great guy and offered a lot of really good information about Jazzmaster pickups and after hearing what I wanted was pretty quick to narrow it down to his "Iola" set. This set, named after his great grandmother, was a custom set that became popular enough that it's now a catalog item. It consists of his "58/59" Alnico 5 neck pickup wound to about 7k and his "Woody Plus" Alnico 2 bridge pickup wound to ~9k.
Up to this point, my Jazzmaster was pretty uninspiring since I built it. I mean, it plays really nicely, looks great, has all the parts I thought I wanted but there just wasn't anything going on with it that made me want to pick it up and play it. I had originally put a set of Fender Pure Vintage 65's in there. I figure you can't go wrong with a 65 Jazzy sound right?
Well, little did I know, that there's a ton I DON'T know about Jazzmaster pickups heh. Anyway, sticking the SHW pickup set in the guitar completely transformed it.
I mentioned in another thread that it went from "meh" to "Man, I can't put this thing down!". What a difference the pickups made!
The neck pickup is HUGE sounding, big, bold yet also Strat-like with tons of character. Unlike the "bland" sounding (to me) neck pickup from the Fender PV65 set.
The bridge pickup, his "Woody Plus" is an overwound Jazzmaster bridge pickup. It's got a lot more output, a touch more in the mids and again, a ton of character. The PV65 bridge by comparison sounded thin, weak and wimpy.
I'm super happy with these pickups and big shout out to @jjjimi84 and @daeg for pointing me to them!
While I was installing the pickups I also made a couple of changes to the wiring. I wound up using both 250k audio taper pots for the lower controls. I had a 1meg tone pot in there originally and hated the taper. I can't imagine what it would sound like with both 1 meg pots like the standard vintage spec. It's plenty bright as it is with 250k pots.
I also put an .015uf PIO tone cap and replaced the 33nf Orange drop I had in there. I just find the .015 to be a better and more useful all around taper for any pickup in any guitar. There's a lot more granularity in rolling off the tone especially on the bridge pickup.
Lastly, I followed what I've been doing with all my Tele's lately and removed the neck pickup from the lower tone stack completely.
It was definitely being loaded down because now the neck pickup sounds bolder, and even more huge than before.
So the lower tone control only affects the bridge pickup, where I tend to use the tone control a lot more on F style guitars and I can Pre-set the tone of the bridge pickup without affecting the neck pickup and just switch back and forth via the toggle.
The Upper control or "Rhythm Circuit" is 100% stock. With 1 meg vol, 50k tone pot and a .02 tone cap.
I know a lot of people have no use for the standard Jazzmaster Rhythm circuit but I kinda dig it for certain sounds.
The last bit in the demo video was all on the neck pickup rhythm circuit and I think it sounded killer!
I had never heard of Sunday Handwound until I read @jjjimi84 's Baritone Jazzmastery conversion build post.
After a wee bit of encouragement from @daeg I reached out to Tim at Sunday Handwound and chatted a bit before taking a chance on a set of his pickups.
Tim's a great guy and offered a lot of really good information about Jazzmaster pickups and after hearing what I wanted was pretty quick to narrow it down to his "Iola" set. This set, named after his great grandmother, was a custom set that became popular enough that it's now a catalog item. It consists of his "58/59" Alnico 5 neck pickup wound to about 7k and his "Woody Plus" Alnico 2 bridge pickup wound to ~9k.
Up to this point, my Jazzmaster was pretty uninspiring since I built it. I mean, it plays really nicely, looks great, has all the parts I thought I wanted but there just wasn't anything going on with it that made me want to pick it up and play it. I had originally put a set of Fender Pure Vintage 65's in there. I figure you can't go wrong with a 65 Jazzy sound right?
Well, little did I know, that there's a ton I DON'T know about Jazzmaster pickups heh. Anyway, sticking the SHW pickup set in the guitar completely transformed it.
I mentioned in another thread that it went from "meh" to "Man, I can't put this thing down!". What a difference the pickups made!
The neck pickup is HUGE sounding, big, bold yet also Strat-like with tons of character. Unlike the "bland" sounding (to me) neck pickup from the Fender PV65 set.
The bridge pickup, his "Woody Plus" is an overwound Jazzmaster bridge pickup. It's got a lot more output, a touch more in the mids and again, a ton of character. The PV65 bridge by comparison sounded thin, weak and wimpy.
I'm super happy with these pickups and big shout out to @jjjimi84 and @daeg for pointing me to them!
While I was installing the pickups I also made a couple of changes to the wiring. I wound up using both 250k audio taper pots for the lower controls. I had a 1meg tone pot in there originally and hated the taper. I can't imagine what it would sound like with both 1 meg pots like the standard vintage spec. It's plenty bright as it is with 250k pots.
I also put an .015uf PIO tone cap and replaced the 33nf Orange drop I had in there. I just find the .015 to be a better and more useful all around taper for any pickup in any guitar. There's a lot more granularity in rolling off the tone especially on the bridge pickup.
Lastly, I followed what I've been doing with all my Tele's lately and removed the neck pickup from the lower tone stack completely.
It was definitely being loaded down because now the neck pickup sounds bolder, and even more huge than before.
So the lower tone control only affects the bridge pickup, where I tend to use the tone control a lot more on F style guitars and I can Pre-set the tone of the bridge pickup without affecting the neck pickup and just switch back and forth via the toggle.
The Upper control or "Rhythm Circuit" is 100% stock. With 1 meg vol, 50k tone pot and a .02 tone cap.
I know a lot of people have no use for the standard Jazzmaster Rhythm circuit but I kinda dig it for certain sounds.
The last bit in the demo video was all on the neck pickup rhythm circuit and I think it sounded killer!
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