JB Player info

[pasterkeith]

i got this guitar in 1986 at a guitar shop where i live for 350. it came with a wonderful hardshell case and had a pic of the girl group vixen inside. ive not seen another one like this and was wondering does it have any value to it?
851776 is on a tag on the back of the head stock. if anyone could help please let me know.

[Hardrock69]

Howdy folks! I am new here, but was doing some reasearch a few days ago and came across this thread. Guy had a neck-thru Strat on eBay for sale.

I have two of these guitars. Made in 1985-86 at the Westheimer factory in Incheon, South Korea.

Yes, the bridges are cheap pieces of crap. Kahler knock-offs.....the frame surrounding the bridge mechanism that is screwed to the top of the guitar will eventually break.

I bought my first one in 1985 brand new for $250. Within 5 years the bridge frame broke. So I bought a Kahler Pro bridge to replace it. It was not a perfect fit....I had to enlarge the rout a bit to get the holes to lineup, and some other minor mods to the body, but once it was in, and set up, it was a great guitar. They can be found VERY occasionally on ebay. I only see one or two a year come up for sale. They never sell for more than 300 bucks, but then, if you buy one you WILL have to shell out $275 for a new Kahler, and you will never be able to get the money out of it you have to put in. The Kahler itself is worth more than the guitar.

They are good guitars though. No heel where the neck and body converge. Frets appear to be Gibson-ish. Rosewood neck.

By the way, pasterkeith, Vixen had an endorsement deal with JB Player during their heyday in the mid-80s, which is why you found that photo of them in your case.

In the late 90s I walked into a pawnshop. The guy was a fan of my playing and would sometimes cut me a deal. On the guitar-tech bench was a red neck-thru JB Player strat....with (of course) a broken bridge.

I told him I would give him 75 bucks for it as it was. He did not even have to put the bridge back on the guitar. He accepted my offer.

I had just got my first PC...Google did not exist....and after a day or so of searching (with my limited knowledge of the internet) I found a guitar shop in New Jersey who had a Kahler Pro that was still in it's original packaging. It was a black finish bridge, which I needed because on this red JB Player, the hardware was black.

I bought it, and put it on, and I still have it.

If you can find these guitars, and get them for under 100 bucks, someday you can get your money out of them when you sell them, as they are of great quality.

One other thing.....they weigh as much as a Les Paul. And the black one I have has a REALLY low end tone to it. I have a single EMG humbucker in the bridge position. My main axe is an '88 Gibson Flying V with the same pickup configuration, and when I switch from the V to the JB Player, I have to turn my mids and highs up to get it to sound right.

In one aspect, it is too bad these guitars were not more successful, as they are great guitars with the best features of Gibson and Fender combined. On the other side of the coin, it is a good thing they were not more successful, as even their Blue Book value is not much, so they can usually be had for cheap.

The above is pretty much all I know about them. Hope the info is helpful to you who are reading this.

[daan]

I just got a neck-thru JBP

It's in just about perfect shape. No fret wear I can find, less scratches on it than the usual year-old guitar, let alone 25+years, and everything came with it. (whammy bar, allen wrenches). I did find a place on line that sells Kahler trems www.wammiworld.com they have a hard-tail bridge that will go into the giant route left behind by these tremelos

With the other 2 JBP's I've had (both bolt-on neck guitars) I never liked the sound they had, weak or low-output pickups so I have a Duncan JB pickup I wanted to install in here. I was kind of suprised when I unbolted everything and found that it was routed S/S/S, instead of H/S/S like the other ones I had.

I do have a guardplate cut for HSS but I don't really want to cut up the wood in here since everything is in such good shape, so maybe I'll get some S-sized humbuckers to put in the original guard. It's in such fantastic shape, I shouldn't be changing anything anyway...
and mine isn't very heavy- even with the neck-thru maple construction, it might be a pound heavier than my Squier strat. That one sounded better than the original JB pickups though. The neck on this one feels thinner and flatter than the bolt-neck one I have. It still feels nice, though. The neck joint is basically not there:

overall just a fantastic guitar.

[john_rossdale]

right! this is a very nice strat copy.. even looks better that the orig.. Ill surely make good out of it..

[daan]

New bridge:

THis plate goes on over the GIANT route left behind by the original one, and the new bridge gets attatched to the plate:

I had to cheat and add the 2 screws at the front of the plate, it's supposed to be held on by the 4 bridge screws but because of the huge tremolo route there's nothing for the front bridge screws to go into.

I got a nice B/W/B pickguard for it, the original guard was single ply black. I also got a set of Hot Rail pickups, CTS pots, Switchcraft 5-way and input jack for the guitar too. THe body and neck are really nice, but all the electronics were cheap and didn't sound good. I'm sure the parts I got for this are worth 3X what the guitar is worth, but I've wanted one of these since the 80s and I'm never going to sell it anyway, so I don't mind. If I get REALLY ambitious I could plug the swimming pool under the bridge and just get a hardtail Strat bridge, but since this thing really is in mint shape (other than what I've done to it) I didn't want to cut it up too much.

[cfilipponi]

[daan]

[cfilipponi]

[cfilipponi]

This is my guitar.

[daan]

Very nice, I love that color! Did you add the bridge pickup or did it come that way?

[cfilipponi]

It had the double bridge pick up when I bought it, but they were white and didn't work. It has all new electrical now and sounds and plays amazing. The action on this guitar is so light, it's crazy.

[Hardrock69]

Hey guys, checking back in.

Firstly, that adapter plate is a cool idea

What I did on the two I have was epoxy and screw a fitted wood block into the neck side of the Kahler cavity, as the screw holes on that side of the mounting frame hang into air otherwise. But then to hide my handiwork, I made a pickguard that fit around the front edge of the Kahler mounting plate (next to the bridge pickup).

So...that adapter plate is certainly going to be an efficient way to mount it, but too late for me, lol.

I also had my memory jogged just now. The original imitation Kahler bridges that come with these will break, but I just realized what could contribute to this.....I had forgotten for years that within 3 years of getting mine, the springs had worn out....so I went to a local surplus warehouse place and went looking in their spring section.....I found 3 heavy-duty springs and installed them...they were just the right tension for me, but it is possible they created a bit more stress on the crummy steel frame than the original ones did.

I just got a third one....it is black as well (my second). I am having it shipped to me and should get it within a couple of weeks. This one is missing it's locking nut and bridge. Not surprising. I did get it fairly cheap. When I get a Kahler Pro to put on it, I will still have less than $250 in it.

Cfilipponi, that is a beautiful finish! That's metallic, isn't it? My red one is just plain fire-engine red, lol.

And Daan....that is just like the one I have, er...the TWO I have lol.

The one that was on eBay last year was all white, and I got sniped on eBay at the last second for 300 bucks.

It is neat to see what colors these come in.

Here....I just discovered a couple of photos I have. The first one is a closeup of the bridge of my original black JB Player. You can see my handiwork underneath the pickguard where it buts up against the bridge on the right side:



Next we have a photo of the bridge on my red one. I have not made a custom pickguard for it yet (been on my to-do list for a long time), and did not make any effort to hide it or make it blend in with the red paint. I will do that someday, lol.

So you can obviously see what I did to mount the bridge.



Most definitely not professional in appearance, but I wanted those front two bridge screws to screw directly into something solid, that was connected to the rest of the guitar.

These neck-thru Strats are still pretty hard to find. Mostly I see bolt-on neck guitars or acoustics.

[BluesHawk]

[daan]

I got my neck-thru 99% finished finally. I wired up the pickguard (3 "Hot Rails" pups, and standard Strat switching) The neck pocket area had to be opened up because the bottom of the neck is a lot wider than on a "real" strat) and the area around the bridge was obviously different, too. I had to remove enough of the guardplate that I had to drill new screw holes around the top and bottom of the bridge...Also, where the switch goes had to be opened up because the original pickup switch was a tiny box shaped one instead of the bigger Switchcraft one I went with. So, everything had to be adjusted to get it all to fit together. The front screws on the bridge would just be sitting in air because of the HUGE hole left by the original bridge, so I had to find acutal bolts to attatch it to the plate. Then I had to find locking nuts, because the regular ones would wiggle loose after a while. Then, I had to remove MORE wood so the nuts cleared the front of the route...

As far as the bridge goes, it's sitting on a plate so it's up higher than they meant it to. The saddles have to be dropped down a ways to get the action reasonable. THe usual fix for that is a similar thickness shim under the neck. But of course the neck on this can't be moved. I can make the saddles go where they need to, but the Allen bolts stick up so high they hit the strings. 2 minutes with the grinder will solve that. ANd I have to grind down the bolt heads so the E saddles don't hit them, because I couldn't find bolts that fit in the holes in the bridge, that had flush heads... It never ends. The bolts were a convenient place for the bridge ground, though.


While it was together it sounded AWESOME despite not being intonated. Plus it is almost the same weight as my other JB (which is just the neck of my original JBP now, actually.) BUt the necks are pretty much perfect, so if you can find one GRAB IT because they're excellent! I've bought Walmoth and Allparts necks (and had one custom made by a guy I found online) and this JBP neck is what I actually use the most. And I got it (along with an entire guitar, ha ha) for less than Warmoth or Allparts charges for just a neck.
And to think I had to do all this work because I thought fitting a block into the old bridge route would be "too much work"... Next time, maybe.

[daan]

Photo update: (apparently all my photos dissapeared sometime in the last 5 years...)

My first JBP in 1986. THat would be the nose of my 1979 Dodge OMni in the background... Sold this guitar in 1989 to help pay for school. I never saw another JBP again until I got this one to replace it. I never saw "burst" colored ones when these were new, just red, white and black ones.


WHen I went to my local guitar store for strings, etc. they had this JBP bass, a neck-thru one. (More on this later)

At the time I got the blue-burst, I was playing this Mexican Strat. THe JBP neck was about a million times nicer, but the Fender was lighter (and honestly sounded better). Plus it stayed in tune.

So I took them both apart, and ended up selling THIS off (yes, I did finish assembling it before I sold it-$100 store credit for parts and stuff) the one I kept looked like this

I've since replaced the pickups, so all that's left of the blueburst is the neck. But that was definitely the best part of the guitar!

(That's a G&L ASAT pup in the bridge, a "Select by EMG" middle [perfect for "glassy clean" rythym playing] and a Dimarzio SDS-1 in the neck, big thick fat but still Strat-sounding)