External Guitar Power Supply

I have this 1998 made in Japan Squier Vista “Jagmaster” (a cross between a Jaguar and a Jazzmaster).

I use it as my project guitar, but because it’s kind of rare I’m careful that any changes I make to it could be reverted to the condition I got it in. So I got a second pickguard and left the original electronics attached to the original pickguard. I nicknamed “The Woman In the Red Dress”.

I had won some JH EMGs at a charity auction, and I wasn’t completely happy with the P-Rails I had in there previously, so I decided to put them in the Jagmaster. I did have to carefully file the pickup cutouts larger to fit these beefy boys.

When I first but put them in I thought they could be active or passive, but the output was way too low; the pickups really do need to be powered. What to do then? I definitely didn’t want to cut a battery box into this guitar. So I came up with an idea to have a battery box external to the guitar.

It’s just a box with two stereo jacks and a 9V inside. The positive 9V line runs along the ring of the cable into the guitar where it is attached to the pickups. The negative of the battery is connected to the ring of the output jack, which means the battery is connected through the sleeve to ground when a cable is connected (this is a common technique inside active guitars, we just moved it to the box instead).

Then I run a short stereo cable from the guitar to the box and tie it down to my guitar strap. I can just leave it attached all the time.