so i bought a secondhand Squier Jazzmaster. the price was so ridiculously low (as it is when you buy new, so go figure), i couldn't help myself.
the picture above is off the net, btw, but mine is exactly like it. gotta love them factories.
wish i had a porch to hose down or put a table on, though. anyway.
after a while i ran into the same thing that has been boggling minds of Jazzmaster owners everywhere: what ON EARTH were the people at fender thinking when they put in that top circuit? you know, the slide switch and two roller controls?
first thing i did was bypass the whole thing - no matter what position the switch was in, the sound would be the same. determined by the standard toggle pickup selector, that is.
but having two unused roller pots got me thinking:
- cheap guitar.
- owner willing to drill extra holes in cheap guitar.
- lots of fun circuits around with two pots for controls.
- Jazzmaster + Fuzz = Garage Goodness.
so off it went.
i tried breadboarding the classics (Fuzzrite, FZ-1/1a), but either i didn't really like them (fuzzrite) or they seemed too fickle (most notably the Ge FZ-1. would've been nice to run it off AA batteries, though.)
so in the end i threw in a derivative of an Elka Dizzy Tone i traced some years back, that i had adapted for negative ground (not that that matters, since i'm onna run if off a batthree) and that i skipped the tone control on.
this is the schematic:
i did use silicon for the darlington to improve reliability.
and i drilled some holes..
yup. that's room for a battery clamp right beside the pickup selector, wires running through pickup routing, to go to the funky pink perfboard. because i could.
and i could've had all that underneath the pickguard with the back of the guitar intact, but if you've ever taken the pickguard off a jazzmaster i'm guessing you know how much i was looking forward to changing batteries. enough to drill a hole right through, indeed.
oh, and to save battery life, i replaced the jack with a stereo one so the battery only connects when the guitar is plugged in.
personally, i think it sounds amazing, and i like the flick-of-a-switch type action. lots of different tonalities through combinations of the two fuzz controls and the guitar volume/tone as well.
and it sputters and oscillates like crazy when the battery starts to die, which can be nice, but it's not for everyone. or for me on a daily basis.
must go out and buy fresh batteries.
have to do a video, maybe.
Gnarl's up!
