Shim the neck back 0.5-0.75 degrees, Stewmac full-pocket wood shims are nice. Vintage Mustangs/Jaguars/Jazzmasters were shimmed at the factory in-period.
Raise the bridge
Adjust tailpiece height so the arm is angled only slightly away from body
Pull the bridge to angle slightly back from center before tuning, shoot for centered in the thimbles once in-tune
Check the knife-edge and slot interface where the bridge plate holes and the tailpiece pole pieces meet.
I use a wilkinson roller bridge, personally. I got my start on telecasters where palm muting with your hand on the bridge is the way you do things and tune o matics cut my hand up pretty bad
fwiw doing victor’s bridge tuning trick and lubricating the knife-edge with krytox gpl105 (low viscosity teflon I use for switch springs) helps it bounce back much smoother
s/o to this video
curiously the 2021 jagstang doesn’t have multiple notches under the vibrato
kinda want a jag-stang bass now, with a musicman style pickup (or a double j humber if possible) at the bridge and a jazz pickup at the neck, and the idiotic switching options too (32" scale naturally)
lo and behold… look what was living in the basement. a kurzweil pc88mx! belongs to gf’s dad. this thing is so sick, it even has a decent Rhodes sound. i did a little noodling, i don’t really know what i’m doing but i know enough theory to make some two handed 7th and 9th chords and do some melody. it feels so so much easier than guitar by comparison lol, i was like “oh duh this is how you do this [plays diatonic 7th arpeggios up and down the scale]”. the weighted keys feel quite heavy, i know it’s in good condition so it’s just me not being used to it.
if anyone has any advice or go-to materials for learning basic jazz harmony on piano lmk! something like a course or roadmap would be great, I follow OpenStudioJazz on youtube and looks like they will be really good for this.
I’m now fully descended into the world of fender offset weirdos, s/o to @Victor’s tips upthread. 11s sorted intonation and tuning stability and now I’m working on neck pitch to fix some sixth string issues
learned:
the literal geometry of the floating bridge design was intended to mimic an arch top for jazz(mastery) but failed at its intended purpose, picked up by surf and later new wave weirdos instead
necks need to be shimmed back to achieve said arch geometry and this is why my jagstang plays way worse from the factory than my duo sonic
leo fender didn’t anticipate the advent of low gauge strings from ernie ball which is why a 25.5" floating bridge needs 10s and a 24" needs 11s
I’ve got a set of three different shims coming from stewmac to give the c. 1993 kurt cobain signature a c. 1960 setup. It feels just a little goofy next to the modern duo sonic no-fuss hardtail but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy learning and taking it apart. Romantic appreciation of fussy engineering aside, the neck is worth the trouble (and the 23% b-stock discount helps (don’t buy a jag-stang))
also, ol’ mike (puisheen on youtube) they’d a client without skipping a beat and it’s such a relief in the guitar world where posters typically skew reactionary. he may have a replica rivers cuomo warmoth strat but he seems otherwise alright
looking into building DIY kit clone pedals next after seeing the centaur on the equipboard page for hisako tabuchi and learning about that whole deal
i setup a DI thing for my guitar lesson and honestly might just keep doing it this way, i’ve got decent monitors and it sounds pretty much like my keyboard amp anyway
I was looking at basses but then I saw this wicked black budget Ibanez:
The reverse headstock is supposed to make it so you can bend the top strings easier, but it also means you have to get locking tuners for a reverse headstock which aren’t as widely available. i have zero experience with Ibanez guitars, but apparently the Gio line has been garbage up until this model. Looking around YouTube, people seem to be using this as a platform for modding vs just buying a better-quality Ibanez.
I’m thinking about pairing it with one of those smaller, sub-$200 Orange Crush amps because I like the sound
The Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp is supposed to be relatively decent, but I have my doubts.
the mustang heaphone amp is fine to use as a DI type thing straight to an interface but the cheap orange crush will probably sound better, cuz I like orange
Haha, I bought one of these. I had been looking for something like this for a while. There was an RG470 model that was almost identical in the mid-aughts that I wanted to buy. It was a bit more expensive and I was pretty broke. The one I got was fresh out of the box and I had to tune it up in the GC while another one of the employees was just farting around on a 2x12 a few feet away. Pretty annoying, but worth it. Neck looked and felt very good
It was still in tune when I got it home and I played through several songs with bendy solos and all without having to do much more adjustment. This was the main thing I want when returning to playing live.
The bridge is spot on tone wise, like exactly what you would expect. I’ll need to take a look at the wiring before I make any call on replacing that one.
