Jazzmaster custom wiring without 1meg linear rollers

[brokebymonday]

Hey dudes, and dudettes.  Wiring up a jazzmaster with 2 p90's a volume pot, tone pot, also a 3 way toggle and a 3 way slider switch.  All of the jazzmaster's harnesses i see have the 1meg rollers for tone and volume.  (or i dunno what they are for).  Anywho... do i need the rollers? (or whatever they are).

Any help is appreciated.

T :binkybaby:

 

[brokebymonday]

or i can use one as a kill switch  :headbang:

 

[Re-Pete]

From memory, the Jazzmaster roller pots have a 1Meg volume pot & 50K tone pot. Both mini pots and kinda specialised for that roller operation rather than the standard pot. To put in anything else in that harness you have to look at the spaces and be 100% sure your replacements will fit in.

The slider switch is a two throw switch, on/off. Yes you could wire it in as a kill switch option, as a stand alone without any pots wired in. But the slider switch isn't the most robust switch & may fail you more than you would like to replace parts.

You don't need the roller pots. They were originally designed as an optional volume & tone pot circuit for the neck pickup. In the original design you flicked the slide switch and it engaged the settings of the roller pots (you pre set them) but you could still use the bridge pickup with the main volume & tone pots settings (I think that's how it worked). There's a few YT videos around showing how that worked.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

In the standard Jazzmaster control scheme, the slider is a two throw on/on switch. "Down" allows you to use the 3-way toggle pickup selector and the normal controls (1 Meg linear volume, 1 Meg audio tone, 0.022uf tone cap) while "Up" defaults to the neck pickup, eliminates the pickup selector (bridge pickup is unavailable), and uses the upper "preset" roller pots (1 Meg linear volume mini-pot, 50k linear tone mini-pot, 0.033uf tone cap). It is intended to create a dark, well, jazzy tone, which I think it does a fine job of. I'm a fan, but there are those that can't stand it. If you don't want that functionality, you could certainly leave the preset controls out and wire the slider as a kill-switch.

 

[Glimmer]

Here's a little demo that shows the how the rhythm circuit works and how it differs from the pup combinations available via the "lead circuit":

[youtube]ShYSxni7KcE[/youtube]

And here are some sample tunes by the same guy illustrating same:

[youtube]KN2t3R4vByc[/youtube]