Help! Analog Controls In EBMM Majesty Monarchy

[Liam Huehn]

Hello

So The preamp died in my Music man majesty. Ive contacted support and haev tried any remedies apart from buying a new one and they have not worked
I have not really ever toyed with the electronics in any of my other guitars so this might be a obvious thing that im too dumb to understand. But i want to remove the digital stuff, replace it with normal pots, but keep the use of the piezo pickups as well as the dimarzios


PS, i have a 6 string EBMM monarchy as well as my 7 string monarchy that is the one im talking about. I intend to replace them in both but my 6 hasnt had issues apart from a dead piezo saddle.

 

[tbonesullivan]

I'm pretty sure the preamp module is what powers the piezo, which is an active circuit. I'm not sure there would be any easy way to rewire the guitar and keep the piezo functional.

 

[beej]

The piezo requires a preamp. There are plenty of onboard preamps out there, so you could technically replace that with something and wire it to a separate output. The pikcup switching, however, I'm not sure about ... the pickup selector switch requires the electronics to function- it's not a standard toggle switch. You'd have to play around with finding a switch that fits.

So even if you could do this, I imagine the resale value would take a big hit. Personally I'd encourage you to consider sending it to EBMM to repair, or getting a new board. Just my two cents.

 

[racerx]

To second @beej -- I had a similar issue with my Majesty and I had them send me out the new board. Even though it looks intimidating, the swap isn't as bad as it may seem. Even if you aren't comfortable or shipping to SLO is impractical, a local tech could probably do it in 1-1.5 hours of labor.

 

[Liam Huehn]

I'm pretty sure the preamp module is what powers the piezo, which is an active circuit. I'm not sure there would be any easy way to rewire the guitar and keep the piezo functional.

Sorry for the late reply.. Is there any theoretical way it can be pulled off? These arent guitars im willing to resell so resale value is out of the question for me

 

[DrKev]

Sorry for the late reply.. Is there any theoretical way it can be pulled off? These arent guitars im willing to resell so resale value is out of the question for me

I don't know a ton about piezo modules but if you could get enough info about saddle compatibility (element polarity could be an issue) you might be able to install a non-EBMM piezo pre amp with the EBMM saddles. What about the Graph Tech Ghost system and/or Fishman Powerbridge? Or just use their ow stock saddles if you can get the right string spacing.

Would it work entirely passive? Probably not. If you have part of an afternoon to spare with soldering iron, you could just go ahead and wire everything up to 500k volume and tone pots and see. If the piezo sound sucks, you still have a working passive magnetic pickups until you figure out something else for the piezo.