Jazzmaster - Rewiring

Back in April I wrote about the process of shielding and replacing the pickguard on my beloved Jazzmaster.

Jazzmaster - Pickguard Replacement & Re-shielding

Finally, after five months, I got around to actually rewiring the thing. I had all the pieces and tools, but ended up putting it off again and again. Without a proper place to do this kind of work in our apartment, the only time I could actually work on something messy and dangerous like this is at night time. It got hot and sticky, and the idea of soldering became less appealing---especially because our full days had really been wiping me out at night.

A few weeks ago I had a few days alone to do final preparation for the classes I started teaching at the beginning of this month. It seemed like a good time to get this rewiring taken care of, so that's what I did. AND IT TOOK FOREVER! I hadn't soldered since I was a kid, and I never really did any serious soldering, so I was basically starting at square one. I think the whole thing took like 6 to 8 hours.

Of course, that time wasn't spent actually soldering. One very tedious aspect of the job was working with the cloth wire that came with the kit I used. It is decent wire, but very stiff, so getting it positioned to fit in the guitar cavity among all the other components was tricky. But just cutting and stripping lengths of wire took a lot of time. Rather than doing it quickly with a pair of snips, I had to cut through the cloth all around the end before slipping it off. It's a minor thing, but added a lot to the project.

Some parts were just physically difficult to solder. It took me a long time to get the angle right or fit into a tiny space with some of the contacts. It also took a while to just understand the diagram and make sure I was wiring it properly, because the old wiring was, in fact, a bit different. I also had to carve out the holes for the potentiometers in the pickguard---very crudely, with a pocket knife. I even managed to burn my finger and singe my hair at one point. In the end I managed to get it all wired, but then I had to stuff the whole mess back into the cavity. The stiff wire made this so much harder!

When I finished the job I didn't string it up right away, because when I plugged it in there was a lot of buzzing. I figured I'd have to go back in and fix some grounding somewhere. So I put it off for a couple weeks. The other day I opened it up with the kids, and sure enough the foot of a capacitor had come unsoldered. We just secured it nicely with copper tape and strung it up. And it sounds great!

The main circuit is all new, but the secondary "rhythm" circuit is the original. The kit I bought came with pots and thumb rollers that do not fit each other, so I couldn't use any of those pieces. Even so, the "tonal profile" of this guitar has completely changed. It has a much wider range of tones, surprisingly. It goes brighter and darker, so you can get a really smooth jazzy tone if you'd like, which it didn't quite have before, but you can also take it into the ultra-twang zone for a strat-like sound. Previously I had raised up the neck pickup a bit to accentuate the lower range tones, but now the neck-bridge pickup setting has a different sound to it, which is kind of jarring. I loved that setting so much before, so I may raise up the neck pickup some to bring out that lower range in the mix.

Overall, I'm really happy to have finished this up. I absolutely love the sound of this guitar, and now I get to explore this new range of sounds it is capable of.

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