90s Jackson experts please help

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Meanjoegreene

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Just scored a Japanese Fusion HSS. Seems like a cool guitar so far. What mods or setup tips do y’all recommend?

Looks like both pots are 250k.

Gonna give it a while then take it in for a proper setup. Thought about upgrading pickups but the 250k thing kinda throws me off…never tried those combo 250/500 pots but will be looking into them later
 
I rocked a fusion for a long time. If the electronics are stock (as in, with the preamp boost), I would leave them be, and if they have been messed with at all, I would gut them all out and start from scratch.

It's honestly just too much of a headache trying to fix other people's "ideas", and especially with these, the best sounds I ever got were after replacing everything with EMGs
 
How could I tell if it had the preamp boost ? I checked and it looked like 2 pots and the 5 way. Mines the Japanese version.

I had heard about the boost and kinda looked but wasn’t sure.
 
Not all the Jackson Fusions had the active boost, I think those have three knobs. It should be fairly plain to spot one both by looking at the electronics (should be a battery and a small circuit board in there) and from the function of the knobs, the boost in the Fusions were a sort of cocked-wah mid sweep.
 
Mine doesn’t have it which is fine with me

This is my first guitar with a floating Floyd. I’m looking at the Lawrence Wilde pickups for possible upgrades. Looks like one of the HBs is made to run off a 250 pot. So I could use that and 2 of their singles and still keep the blade look.

Cool guitar…my first true shredder, ha ha
 
I personally wouldn´t choose pickups depending on which pots were in there to begin with, just as easy to swap those out at the same time and basically without extra cost.
 
Oh yeah

But that also might be better to balance the singles and HBs. Big drop in volume switching from the neck to the HB even though the singles are supposed to be basically HBs too

Honestly some volume isn’t an issue…just more extreme in this case than I expected
 
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Oh yeah

But that also might be better to balance the singles and HBs. Big drop in volume switching from the neck to the HB even though the singles are supposed to be basically HBs too

Honestly some volume isn’t an issue…just more extreme in this case than I expected

If you're going to do anything in there, i would just rip everything out and start from scratch

You can lower the output of the hb to try and get it a bit more balanced but it's always going to be an issue

If you're going to mess with it, take it all out and start over with 250/500 pots and do it right
 
It’s really a kick ass guitar especially for the money. Once I get the setup right it should be real nice regardless of price.

I’ve looked for a Gibson scale shredder for a while. Didn’t wanna spend too much on something like the noho 24. Seems odd there aren’t more 24.75’s super strats.
 
So it actually stays in tune pretty well…but any DIY tricks to make the trem better without going full on replacement?

Not ready to upgrade to a real Floyd yet
 
It´s got the Schaller JT590, presumably, so that´s a really nice Floyd. Basically the best stock/OEM trem of the era, and everyone used it even on high end builds when the OFR wasn´t available for manufacturers. One common thing to watch out for is wobbly pivot posts - just wrap them in some plumbers tape until they´re snug in the inserts. Other than that you can just clean it, dab a drop of machine oil on the knife edges and make sure everything is screwed down the right amount of tight.

The main fault with these is that the baseplate is too soft to maintain the threads for the intonation screws. These often strip, leading to tuning issues and eventually losing grip of the saddles. You could buy a new baseplate from Schaller (revised with hardened inserts for the threads at some point later on in the 90s) for like 35$ back in the day, but they´re more like 125$ these days and at that point you might just as well change the whole thing even if it´s more expensive. I refurbished dozens of them earlier, but these days I hesitate slightly when I see a guitar with one and do the math if it´s worth the extra expense. More often than not you can see that at least one saddle is way off the intonation pattern - pulled up hard to the screw - which is a sign that the baseplate is shot.
 
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Excellent info…much appreciated

My trem just has licensed under FR and rebranded as Jackson. It seems decent but pretty light if I had to guess. Not sure if it’s the version you’re referring to.
 
Here´s the 590:
https://www.axebition.com/bridge/jackson-jt-590

Otherwise it´s probably a japanese Takeuchi TRS, another extremely common model used by tons of manufacturers at the time:
https://www.axebition.com/bridge/jackson-jt580

Jackson used variations of the Takeuchi for the imports for the 90s and beyond. As did Ibanez, Yamaha, Valley Arts and so on. Not a real high-end trem, but decent enough to be the standard in that whole good-quality import segment.

You can tell if the baseplate is basically rectangular, which is the Schaller, or has the angles in the back, which is the Takeuchi.
 
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