U00805 RR Deco Dream

[bratfink]

Well here are the images of the inspection strip down. Please give me your input into what has been tampered with and what hasn't, And any tips on what I can do to improve it. It looks like it has had a fret dress so it has seen the attention of a guiatr tech at some time.

Both RR2448 and U00805 together


Neck damage: Possibly from a previous refret?


Spring cavity: Sig is either MJ or ML, anyone know what this is for?


The cusomary wiring mess, looks to have been tampered with.


Pickup selector, seems to work well and feels nice, perhpas new?


All pots are 500k, my guess is they have all been replaced from the originals?


J80 in Neck and J50-b in Bridge, I am not certian these are original.


And here's why: Did they have the printed logos in '90?


And would they really have put an angled ring on a straight neck and recessed trem? (Both are like this)


Schaller looks right, it is recessed into the body. RR 2448 is nothing like this, the schaller on that sits up pretty high and the neck is actually angled back from the body. The routes look the same though.


The input jack, looks wrong, RR2448's follows the contour of the wing, this does not.


The wiring looks poor here as well, The other interesting point is that it won't accept a cable jack unless I unscrew it for the body!


Any info will be greatly appreciated, I will be looking to make this an excellent playing guitar so info on where to get the correct jack, the correct pickups and rings and general setup is needed.

[Grandturk]

Nice pics!

I think they would have had printed logos by '90. My Fusion had printed a printed logo and it was '91. I think the connection is when they went from wide humbuckers to regular sized.

[Brian]

That pic of the neck pickup bezel is pretty funny. Looks like the guitar has no frets at all. Those suckers are super flat.

[RobRR]

Ok lets see... the neck damage is somewhat common, Ive seen it alot. Its one of two things, either the binding simply came lose and cracked the finish, or the guitar took a shot to the face of the headstock and slightly seperated the neck from the fretboard. Usually, you can tell if the guitar took a good hit to the headstock so Id say its just finish cracking.

All the electronics look original... pups, wiring for the most part, hell even the output jack wire looks original. Im also pretty sure that the did have those pup covers in 90 as well.

Still an awesome score... I was watching it too but just dont have and disposable funds at the moment.

[charvel750]

No, no, no regarding the wiring as original. It would have had the JE-1200 mid boost active circuit. Pots would have been compatible with it (ex: 50 k for the volume). The jack plate is likely original. So are the pickups, although most had J50 in the neck, not the J80. A cool axe, who cares if it's been rearranged, fix it how you want it and love it.

[RobRR]

Wouldnt 90 still be considered a custom order guitar?

[bratfink]

No, no, no regarding the wiring as original. It would have had the JE-1200 mid boost active circuit.

You sure about that? My 89 RR doesn't have the JE1200, and the pot setup doesn't seem to fit that on either (2 vol, 1 tone).

Wouldnt 90 still be considered a custom order guitar?

I wouldn't have thought so on a U0 serial, but I guess maybe.

I think they would have had printed logos by '90. My Fusion had printed a printed logo and it was '91. I think the connection is when they went from wide humbuckers to regular sized.

They are the same size as the others ones in my 89 (which has the raised logo).

Thanks for the input guys, keep it coming

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

I agree that

A) Those frets are flat as hell (I don't believe it's been refretted AND worn back down that low, in 20 years, unless the guy played a LOT and it was his only guitar!)

B) The finish cracking, at the binding. Unless you see some damage to the headstock, or a ding on the side of the neck near the cracks, is likely from the binding coming loose at the edge of the fingerboard. It happens.

My SL2 has the same thing; from around the 12th to the 19th fret there was a slight gap between the binding and the fingerboard, which allow a lot of "gunk" to get in the gap, and softened the glue.

I had to scrape it out with a razor blade as best as I could and then re-glued it with thin super glue, and then scraped the excess from the fingerboard. But, I have those EXACT cracks on the treble side of my neck at about the 15th fret.

I don't particularly care as I bought the guitar for a "beater"/player which is why I did the repair myself.

[Nazgul]

Your RR2448 has a non-recessed with extra pull-back cavity for bigger stretch (useless imo and looks ugly). Jackson did this in 89 and 90.

RR1 has normal recessed floyd.

That pickup is MIJ. I had one just like this and didn't sond good. Very thin sounding and low output. USA made J50s (oversized jackson covers) sound much better.

Wouldnt 90 still be considered a custom order guitar?

Not with the U serial.

[Foulacy]

judging from that picture, it needs a re-fret.

[toejam]

Wouldnt 90 still be considered a custom order guitar?

Not with the U serial.

My RR1T is U08851 and it's from the year 2000.

[bratfink]

OK, I did some further investigation on the pickups.

I still cannot decide if the pickups fitted are original or not but the pickup routes and the bezel hole spacings are definately not for the early 'wide' pickups. And there is no evidence of modification to the body, no holes filled, no disturbed paintwork etc so those routes I would say are definately the way it left the factory.

So my questions to you guys are:

• When did Jackson change over the pickup sizes from the wide to the regular?
• What pickups were fitted in the smaller routes?
  • Did they still have raised logo's, or
  • Were they printed (like these), or
  • Were they left blank, or
  • Were they not covered pickups at all?
• When did they switch from the Jackson pickups to the Seymor Duncans?

Thanks in advance.

[Nazgul]

Answers in bold.

So my questions to you guys are:

• When did Jackson change over the pickup sizes from the wide to the regular? 1990
• What pickups were fitted in the smaller routes? 50B, 50N, 90C are the ones I've seen.
  • Did they still have raised logo's, No
  • Were they printed (like these), Yes
  • Were they left blank, No
  • Were they not covered pickups at all? Sometimes (some MIJ PRO series Jacksons)
  
  
• When did they switch from the Jackson pickups to the Seymor Duncans?

Thanks in advance.

Uncovered Jacksons pickups (made in USA) were first put into San Dimas era Jacksons ('84-'86). In '87 (first Ontario year) they got those wide covers over them and wide pickup rings. In '90 (when they started with MIJ line) they started production of normal sized covered pickups with printed lettering...these weren't made in USA anymore and are by some (like me) considered less good/crappy. J50B/J50N set that I had in my MIJ RR PRO was crap.

[bratfink]

Thanks,

You can add a J80 to that list since this one has one fitted in the neck.

They certainly don't seem as meaty as the J50's I have in RR2448! So I guess this guitar becomes a candidate for a pickup swap, I have a Kent Armstrong OTT that I know nothing about and hav been dying to find out what it sounds like!