Trying to bridge the gap between vintage and new

[GreenKnee]

I've narrowed down the biggest different in sound between my 1962 Jaguar and any of my newer Jaguars. No matter how bright or trebly the 1962 gets, it never gets piercing or over-bearing in the top end. However, the newer Jags, with repro vintage pickups, can quite easily get piercing and over bearing in that top range.

Is this the aging and wearing of the pickups and associated electronics? Do old guitars just sound better?

I'm wanting to gig with my American Original Jaguar as my '62 is too precious to take out and risk having stolen or broken. Through my setup the 62 is amazing, bright and clear, fits perfectly in the mix, and never becomes ear piercing with the treble. The AO sounds great, but to get that same clarity and to sit in the mix nicely the treble can become a little over bearing. If I turn the treble down, it does take that high bite but it lose some of the bite.

Is there anything that I could do to the AO in order to keep that same feel? I play through a Twin Reverb and a pretty comprehensive pedal board.

Thanks for any tips and insights

[Shadoweclipse13]

I've often wondered the same with vintage vs new. You're not the first person I've ever heard that has said that about vintage JMs/Jags being bright but never overbearing. I'm genuinely curious what could cause that.

[Embenny]

It's the pickups. Your '62 has flat poles and a hotter wind. Mine certainly does. Those '62-'63 pickups are really special.

I was playing my '62 and '65 back to back yesterday and thinking about how easily I could be convinced it was an A/B between a vintage and modern reissue if I was blindfolded. The '62 is just a much fuller, warmer guitar, and if I dialed in the amp for it and switched over to the '65, I had to roll off the tone knob immediately to avoid the ice pick effect.

I had a discussion long ago with Curtis Novak where I asked him if he could wind his pickups to sound like a set of '62s, and he flat out told me he couldn't. He said his are modeled after the second iteration of jag pickups, and that first year and a half of production was built differently.

I've played flat-poled reissue pickups and none of them sound like my '62, they all sound much more like my '65 despite that guitar having staggered magnets. The vintage '62 is definitely overwound by comparison. It has both a lower resonant peak and a higher output.

I've stopped searching for vintage reproduction pickups because I finally have two "forever" vintage jags that do everything I want a vintage guitar to do, so I focus on noiseless performance from anything newer. If I was going to take a stab at repro pickups though, I'd take a multimeter to the '62 and talk to winders about making something just as hot from the closest thing to that wire as possible.

If your goal is to use the AO out though, why not solve the ice pick and get modern performance out of it at the same time? Kinman makes a set called the Blues Jag that is supposed to have a slightly softened high end. For a gigging guitar, I certainly could never go back to regular single coils, personally.

[GreenKnee]

It's the pickups. Your '62 has flat poles and a hotter wind. Mine certainly does. Those '62-'63 pickups are really special.

I was playing my '62 and '65 back to back yesterday and thinking about how easily I could be convinced it was an A/B between a vintage and modern reissue if I was blindfolded. The '62 is just a much fuller, warmer guitar, and if I dialed in the amp for it and switched over to the '65, I had to roll off the tone knob immediately to avoid the ice pick effect.

I had a discussion long ago with Curtis Novak where I asked him if he could wind his pickups to sound like a set of '62s, and he flat out told me he couldn't. He said his are modeled after the second iteration of jag pickups, and that first year and a half of production was built differently.

I've played flat-poled reissue pickups and none of them sound like my '62, they all sound much more like my '65 despite that guitar having staggered magnets. The vintage '62 is definitely overwound by comparison. It has both a lower resonant peak and a higher output.

I've stopped searching for vintage reproduction pickups because I finally have two "forever" vintage jags that do everything I want a vintage guitar to do, so I focus on noiseless performance from anything newer. If I was going to take a stab at repro pickups though, I'd take a multimeter to the '62 and talk to winders about making something just as hot from the closest thing to that wire as possible.

If your goal is to use the AO out though, why not solve the ice pick and get modern performance out of it at the same time? Kinman makes a set called the Blues Jag that is supposed to have a slightly softened high end. For a gigging guitar, I certainly could never go back to regular single coils, personally.

Very interesting, thank you for the comprehensive reply. It's quite reassuring to know it's not just me that can hear it, puts a certain amount of confidence in my own hearing.

I might have a word with a few UK pickup winders and see what they think. My only fear is if I ask them if they can voice them as 62, they'll say yes but actually just make their standard Jag pickup and say it's 1962 voiced.

I'm not bothered about noise on stage, I use quite a lot of gain (TI Boost -> Plumes -> Acapulco Gold) and so noise is something I live with, and manipulate to my will quite a bit.

Thanks again

Jack

[jvin248]

.

Lower the pickups in the new guitar as far as possible without the elevator screws falling off. See if the new guitar better matches the old one.

Open the two guitars and using a meter, measure the kohms across the volume pots and disconnect the cap(s) to measure those or read the lookup codes to determine uF, measure the kohms of the pickups. Use a paper clip to feel for higher/lower magnetic strength out of the two pickup sets (if you want to get a number, clip additional paperclips as weights onto the one you are sticking to/suspending from the pickup pole and record how many clips you have when it ceases to hold them). Make a little chart and see where the outliers are at.

Over time Alnico magnets lose strength. May have been "A5" strength to begin now down to A2 or A3 -- and if the new guitar has fresh new A5 they will sound different.

If the Volume pot on the old guitar is at the low end of its range (pots have a 20% range), the output will be darker/warmer/smoother/muddier than a volume pot at the high end of the spec range will be brighter/more articulate/ice-picky.

Pots 'n Caps are a big part of the guitar output system tone -- even when dimed.

If you want to fix the new guitar: lower the pickup(s) as much as you can, swap in a 500k volume pot instead of 1Meg, use a higher uF tone cap than is in there.

[adamrobertt]

Pots 'n Caps are a big part of the guitar output system tone -- even when dimed.

Isn't this not true though? When pots are all the way up the tone cap at least is fully shunted to ground and doesn't affect the output signal until you start turning down the tone pot.

[timtam]

Re vintage, any good evidence of appreciable AlNiCo aging is lacking ....
https://www.gitec-forum-eng.de/wp-conte ... -aging.pdf
From:
https://www.gitec-forum-eng.de/the-book/

Re reissues, Fender publishes specs on the AV65/PV65 pickups: 6.8k and 3.8H, Alnico 5.
But not the AVRI62's AFAIK.
Does anyone have DCR and inductance for them, or real vintage 62s or 65s ?
https://darrenriley.com/product-categor ... r-pickups/

[jorri]

Pots 'n Caps are a big part of the guitar output system tone -- even when dimed.

Isn't this not true though? When pots are all the way up the tone cap at least is fully shunted to ground and doesn't affect the output signal until you start turning down the tone pot.

Basically with caps, yes, but for other reasons.
The higher resistance both blocks most effect of the cap and pulls its cutoff frequency up above human hearing. This is a 1meg though, so since there is a difference turning it down a small amount expect this to be a bit true on 250k. Its not quite shorted. However all pots affect the tone, and the tone pot in same way as volume. They come to a total based on parallel resistance -- the reciprocal of the sum of reciprocals. Or if all the same value divide by amount of pots.

How do those seymour duncan pickups fare? They have a vintage model, modern models then supposedly the antiquity is darker, so what do they do to achieve that? Vintage less hot, but antiquity artificially aged??

[MrJagsquire]

Pots 'n Caps are a big part of the guitar output system tone -- even when dimed.

Isn't this not true though? When pots are all the way up the tone cap at least is fully shunted to ground and doesn't affect the output signal until you start turning down the tone pot.

It's still in circuit to a degree when it's turned up to '10', since the tone cap isn't shorted to ground, it effectively has the resistance of the tone pot to ground. The high end of the signal is 'shunted to ground' with the tone on '0' via the capacitor.

As an example of the effect: I've wired my Esquire (single pickup guitar for those who aren't familiar) so that the 3 way switch has a 250K and 0.022uF cap in series (like when the tone pot is at '10') and it's definitely smoother sounding than the other switch position which disconnects the tone circuit from ground completely: That is like a treble boost in comparison. A similar effect with a 'no load' tone pot when turned up to '10' compared to '9.5' as these effectively disconnect the cap from ground when fully up.

The Creamery seem to have a lot of choices of Jaguar pickups (one of the few UK winders that does it seems), so might be worth getting in contact if you do go that route. However, they aren't taking orders at the moment due to backlog...shame because I fancied one of their chrome covered 'Sonic 60' models with a tapped winding to replace the humbucker in my Jaguar Player.

[GreenKnee]

Wow, thanks for all of your replies, I never expected such a comprehensive and insightful insight into my problem. A pdf with graphs relating to flux of magnets, and how they only loose magnetical strength +200 celcius? Yes please! From this, I'm taking that the reason a 1962 Jaguar sounds so good isn't because it's vintage. It's not because it's aged, and degraded to a magical spot that just so happens to be in tune with the human ear. It's not because I spent an extortionate amount of cash on the guitar of my dreams (ignore me, this probably has a huge impact on my bias as to why this guitar sounds so good,) but it's because it is what is it is. It's a 1962 Jaguar. It just happens that it fits me, and my sound, wonderfully.

Fortunately, that means a lot of gain, and a lot of fuzz.