Fender Jaguar Pickup Mounting

[martin manning]

I've just acquired a vintage Jaguar with its original pickups in place and working. The mounting, as I understand it, has the mounting screws going directly into the body wood, with some type of resilient foam placed between the pickup and the bottom of the cavity.

The problem is that the pickup height adjustment doesn't work, I'm guessing because the foam they are supposed to be sitting on has dried out. I don't want to alter the guitar in any way, but it seems like a new piece of foam or perhaps a couple of springs could be added to get the pickups up where they belong.

I haven't had time to take it apart and see exactly what is going on yet, but has anyone else worked through this one? Are there any traps lurking in there?

Thanks,

MPM

[ken]

I once owned two preCBS Jags, as well as my '61 Jazzmaster that uses the same pickup foam setup. The Jag's foam under the pickups are the same black heavy strip foam that is used to weatherstrip around in-the-wall home air conditioners, as well as between pickup truck bed caps and the bed. You can find it at your local hardware store or lumberyard.

Ken

[martin manning]

Excellent, thanks for the pointer Ken. I see that the Jazz Bass uses foam mounting too, and I found what appears to be Fender-packaged replacement neoprene foam in two sizes. Funny, but the '62 Jag reissue parts list on Fender's site does not include this item, so I can't tell if it is authentic in this respect. The one I have here is an original '62, BTW.

MPM

[jason lollar]

its authentic, I have old jags and jazzmasters and I make both types of pickups including the jaguar claw- foam is a crappy design but thats how its done. If you look at a 50's jazzmaster the foam has turned into a tar like substance- nasty stuff, you could put springs under a jag unlike a jazzmaster where that would be more difficult to do without modifying the guitar

[martin manning]

Thanks, Jason. A little more digging on the web got me an exploded view from '69 that shows all the parts. Looks like the "claw" pieces don't extend under the mounting ears, so they might not get properly supported by springs. A new piece of foam looks like the way to go; I'll just have to get in there and do it.

MPM

[jason lollar]

right- I forgot fender didn't pot the claw on originally.