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Several questions here, somewhat related to the "pairing pickups" topic. I've bought an alnico 5-equipped hot rail pickup from Artec that I'm looking to put in my Jap Jaguar. It currently has a quarter pounder in the bridge and a stock pickup in the neck which is horrendous. It howls and squeals as soon as it's turned on. I'm wondering if I could stick the Hot Rails in the bridge and the QP in the neck? Would this be a problem? String spacing? What else divides bridge and neck pickups? Is it just the resistance rating?

Should I also change the pots and caps relating to the pickups? For instance, humbuckers apparently work better with certain caps. I have a spare Orange Drop cap that I used when I rewired my Nu-Sonic, the humbucker types. Should I use that with the Hot Rails? Also, should I change the pots to lower ratings?

ekwatts wrote:Several questions here, somewhat related to the "pairing pickups" topic. I've bought an alnico 5-equipped hot rail pickup from Artec that I'm looking to put in my Jap Jaguar. It currently has a quarter pounder in the bridge and a stock pickup in the neck which is horrendous. It howls and squeals as soon as it's turned on. I'm wondering if I could stick the Hot Rails in the bridge and the QP in the neck? Would this be a problem? String spacing? What else divides bridge and neck pickups? Is it just the resistance rating?

Should I also change the pots and caps relating to the pickups? For instance, humbuckers apparently work better with certain caps. I have a spare Orange Drop cap that I used when I rewired my Nu-Sonic, the humbucker types. Should I use that with the Hot Rails? Also, should I change the pots to lower ratings?

bridge quarter pounder in the neck would be too hot for me. probably a little woolly but nothing technically wrong with it. the original one howls because it is not wax potted. mine had this problem too. it sucks.

string spacing doesn't matter. they're all the same. the issue is balancing outputs and they could be matched to be reverse wound/reverse polarity with each other to offer noise cancelling.

cap values affect how the treble rolls off when using your tone pot. at full they don't do anything. orange cap, whatever, not a big issue on the final sound, just how it responds to being turned. all bollocks and hype.

default pots are 1meg in a jaguar. you will need to find alpha mini pots if you want a drop-in replacement. 500k might be favourable with those high output pickups.

the more you do of mods like this the less of "that" jaguar sound you'll have at the end of it.

also you're gonna set yourself up for trouble with how the artec will fit into the pickguard rout. if it fits in the claw, great, otherwise you're gonna have a lot of gap going on and it will be unsteady and likely to damage the hole in the body that it screws into, but you can get into duck tape and other gnarly sonic youthy methods of controlling that as you see fit to keep it in place

When I replaced the bridge pickup I left the cover and claws off the pickups and it never really made a difference. It had been badly mauled beforehand so some of the mods were necessary. If I hadn't read already about the dreadful stock pickups I would have thought that it was just another damaged part on a fairly abused guitar.

I'm not really arsed about the Jag sound to be honest. I need a guitar with humbuckers that can handle gain. It already has a Wilkinson roller bridge which really changed the sound.

The Quarter Pounder and Hot Rails are the same resistance so I guess it doesn't matter where they go. I'll have a think about it.