cain
Hi Guys
As some of you know, i have a Fender Powestrat that comes equiped with a fishman electric accoustic bridge and pickup system. Well its pretty cool until the troubles started last night.
The sound goes dead sometimes when you change the pickup selector, then the accoustic randomly comes on even if its turned down etc. Any ideas? I hope its not the accoustic unit thats going, its like R4000 - R6000 to replace or something ☹
AlanRatcliffe
More likely to be a switch. I know the Fishman stuff well, and while I've had problems with individual saddles dying, I've never known a preamp go faulty. Let me fish the schematic out and see how they have wired it, but in the meantime, try some switch cleaner.
cain
K cool, ill try that
AlanRatcliffe
OK... It's the Standard Fishman Powerchip preamp in there, but I don't see the 3-way switch that they usually use to switch between the piezo and magnetic pickups. I gather that to turn off the piezo, you roll off the volume, correct?
So it's almost certainly the volume pot that's mounted on the Powerchip. Turn the volume down and push down on the knob - see if the piezo cuts in when you do. First try rotate the pot a couple of dozen times to clean it (pots are self cleaning to a degree and if you don't use them much they tend to get dirty and turning them will help). If that doesn't work, you'll need to get someone to replace the pot for you. The pot's wired onto the circuitboard, so replacement is more difficult than a standard volume control - not difficult for someone with a bit of technical knowhow though.
cain
Yeh, the three way selector is the normal selector, this started happening even when the acoustic was turned down, so i dont know, ill try cleaning the pot and see. This started after my last setup, someone buggered something up ☹
AlanRatcliffe
You mean 5-way... ?
The volume pot shunts the signal to earth, so if the earth to the pot is broken somehow you'll get the symptoms you describe. It's not always the pot itself (but usually), it can be the earth connection to the pot or even a bit further "downstream". So check all the wires to do with the piezo earth.
Interestingly, with the Fishman system, the three-way switch also shunts either the mag or the piezo to earth to turn one or the other off (centre is off, and neither are switched to earth in the middle so both are on), so usually when they fail, you get both always on.
cain
haha, yeah i mean five way, my local guitar tech gave the five way a spray of switch cleaner, seems its working now. Symptom of gas is that i never owned a guitar long enough to get this problem hehe
