Surprise in the pawnshop

[tjcurtin1]

I got to wondering if maybe the pickups were really poorly positioned or something on the J Vaughan strat - they were anything but hot, which I imagine those Tex-Mex pups SHOULD be. The guitar just had no oomph or character. The standard MIM was much hotter and louder (though with less clarity). Boxy is a good description for how I found the sound of the Blues Junior, with no low-end character or body. I sure have heard some vids of it sounding good on youtube, I just couldn't seem to adjust it to get anything like that.

[Tig***]

I wouldn't want a Blues Jr without several BillM mod's. Those enter the overall price equation.

I got to wondering if maybe the pickups were really poorly positioned or something on the J Vaughan strat - they were anything but hot, which I imagine those Tex-Mex pups SHOULD be. The guitar just had no oomph or character. The standard MIM was much hotter and louder (though with less clarity). Boxy is a good description for how I found the sound of the Blues Junior, with no low-end character or body. I sure have heard some vids of it sounding good on youtube, I just couldn't seem to adjust it to get anything like that.

There's also a chance that the previous owner kept the Tex-Mex pickups before pawning it and put in some cheap replacements.

[tjcurtin1]

I wouldn't want a Blues Jr without several BillM mod's. Those enter the overall price equation.
There's also a chance that the previous owner kept the Tex-Mex pickups before pawning it and put in some cheap replacements.

Ohhh.... I hadn't considered that possibility, but now that you say it, that makes sense. If you could have seen the stunned look on my face as I played that guitar...

[RickinFlorida]

I've never been a fan of the Tex-Mex pickups, either. I installed them on one of the prettiest Strats I ever had (MIM Agave Blue with tortoice shell and "rosewood" fretboard - just beautiful). While all pups are sensitive to distance from the strings, I found the T-Ms were especially so. Reducing that distance made the pups "hotter" but also bolloxed-up the tone soooo badly that they were almost unusable ("bolloxed-up" being the correct technical term for this phenomenon and is used in place of the most often used, but somewhat crude, expletive).