The PICKUPS Suck

The pickups don't suck. They are virtually identical to Fender Stratocaster pickups. The only difference being that they have shielding claws surrounding them. These shielding claws do not really affect the sound, they are simply meant to shield the pickup from interference. Stratocasters do come with 250k pots as stock, though. Jaguars and Jazzmasters come with 1meg pots on the lead control circuit. This makes them brighter and more trebley.

Turn the tone dial down if you want to have the equivelent to a 250k pot that is turned all the way up (in fact, a good idea is to turn the tone pot all the way down, then work your way up, as oppose to the other way around). You can also use the 'rhythm' circuit by flicking the switch on the upper horn control plate upwards.

This will switch to the neck pickup only and will use 50k pots, which will take all the brightness out of your tone (infact, a lot of people don't like using this, as they say it makes the tone "too muffled"). Using the bridge pickup on its own can be very trebley and harsh. Using the neck pickup will provide a more balanced and bassier tone. Though both pickups must be switched on to achieve 60 cycle hum cancelling effect.

The pickups come wired up in parallel as stock. A very simple modification is to wire them up in series. This makes the two single coils combine into a displaced humbucker. This mod takes the place of the bass cut switch, and pickups can then be put either in parallel or in series by flicking this switch. If you want to put humbuckers in a Jaguar, there is no need to route for full size ones. There are plenty of single coil sized humbuckers out there that sound the same.

Feedback can happen to any pickup at a high enough volume. It may be that you are using too much gain. Again, ease back on the tone control, especially if you're using the bridge pickup. Japanese Jaguar pickups are not wax potted. This is a kind of wax insulation which can stop microphonic feedback. It can be relatively inexpensive to get a guitar tech to wax pot your pickups.