Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

In the middle of band practice yesterday, my acoustic starts distorting. After checkign numerous things, figured it was the guitar itself. If I turn down the guitar volume control below 1/2, it was clear again, but turning it up (I usually keep it around 80%) it was distorting like it had a fuzz box on it.
Piezo gone bad? I went for the 12 month used warranty from GC, so I guess it's going back there.

Your sure it's not am amplification issue?

Definitely not the amp - as aI said, when I turned the guitar volume down (and amp up) it was fine. Also had 2 other guitars, they sounded fine.

I'll verify it plugged in at home when I've got a moment - DIed straight into my computer will define it.

Bummer . . . I detest dealing with technical issues. Comes with the territory though.

weak battery?

weak battery?

Very likely I suspect. My A/E Seagull sounds like poo when the batt gets old.

It's worth checking, but I replaced the battery the day before (never know it could have been old).

Definitely try a different battery. Mine has done that before. Battery cured it.

I put a new battery in it, still same problem. I was going to try a 3rd battery, but ran out of time before heading to GC yesterday.
Get there to find that if you buy one of their warranties (this was a 12 month one on used gear), you have to call a toll-free number for authorization first. (Why didn't they give me the pamphlet one of the 3 times I bought used warranties in the last year?)
SO I go outside to call (too noisy in the store), give all my info, and they tell me I will be getting a GC refund card for the full amount of the guitar! Anything under $200 (the guitar was $199.99!), they just refund! I assume they keep a monitor on your account, or they are going to be getting calls from me on the other 2 items soon!
Anyway, went back into the store, saw the guitar tech, he plugged the guitar in - no distortion! WTF? Could be a loose/intermittent something, but he couldn't do anything at that point.
Brought guitar home, no distortion ...

Very odd. I would have bet on bad battery. What you described is exactly what happened when the battery in my Takamine was weak. And it hit all of a sudden, in the middle of a song. Fine one minute, ugly distortion a minute later.

OK...time to look at bad contacts and dirty controls. Get a plain old guitar jack and some contact cleaner. (don't even have to have a cord, just a jack) Spray some cleaner into the output jack, plug in the guitar jack several times. Spray a little in each control knob or slider, work it from 0 to 10 a dozen times.

Since the strings keep constant downward pressure on the saddle I wouldn't expect the pickup itself, but it could be a loose connection there, inside where it connects to the pickup, usually under the saddle. I don't know how yours is made, but I can pull mine by removing the strings and it pulls out with the saddle. IF you have a bad solder joint there it could cause this.

Make sure the nut on the output jack is snug, if it's wiggling around it could be causing trouble. If you can get the control panel out it would be a good idea to check those solder joints too. If it has screws on the control panel make sure those are snug (I wouldn't suspect that but it's worth looking at.)

Could also be the inside spring contact of the output jack has sprung loose. This happened to me with a speaker cabinet once, my '67 Kustom 2x12. Drove me nutz for a week until I figured it out. The spring contact inside got weak, so it didn't hold the tip of the jack tight enough, as the speakers worked it would move in and out, cutting the speaker on and off really fast, creating a really ugly garbled and distorted sound. I finally realized it was too easy to plug it in, replaced the jack and it was fixed. But it was 20 years old or more, so it was no surprise it finally gave up.

So check that. If it's been really easy to plug in lately, it might have a weak spring inside the jack. I've pushed them back into place before and it might or might not work right for a while, I prefer to replace it entirely.

Thanks for the tips, Billy. It's working fine now, so maybe it was just bad battery contact on the replacement - although I had put in the other one just before practice, no telling if it was weak to start with. In the meantime, I've got a $199.99 GC gift card coming!

Problem with any battery-driven electronic piece of equipment these days is that if the voltage drops below xx.xx, it can go from working instantly to non-working. Happened with my chorus pedal at practice, too. Guess I need to look at replacing the 2 battery pedals with power supplies, too (but there's no room on the damn power strip!)

Battery contacts can be cleaned with a pewncil eraser, if it's just dirty. Corrosion is a different story, but can be cleaned up. Depending on accessibility I use a brass wire brush or contact cleaner and some thing that can get in there. Then sometimes really fine sandpaper like 600 grit or finer, lightly, just enough to clean it up. Sometimes it's necessary to take a unit apart, sometimes it can be done by just removing the battery cover.

Never leave batteries in for along time, if they go bad they can leak. I forget now and then and pay the price later...

Check your local music store, you can get a cable that will power several pedals with one power supply, I forget what they call it. I looked around till I found a wall wart that delivers 1000mA, that gives it enough to handle 2 or 3 at once, most only require around 200-300mA. I made up my own power splitter, the cable music stores have now didn't exist. I put it in a box with a contact strip and several connectors robbed from dead wall warts. Once I got the polarity right it worked great.