Necropahgeon
New member
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2008
- Messages
- 1
Recently installed some SD Livewire Metals (actives), and everything worked fine for a few days, but after that, I noticed the bridge pickup sounded weak. It sounds decent when playing faster riffs, but let a note ring out, and it becomes quite obvious there's a problem.
Anything played is only sustained for a few seconds before the sound dies out completely. It's only slightly quieter than the bridge pickup (which is unusual in itself), but overall, it just sounds, for lack of a better word, damp. As if I had draped a Kleenex over the strings before playing.
Stranger still: Occasionally, when the guitar is first plugged in, the pickup works just fine for a minute, and then reverts back to the same condition.
I checked the solder joints. In fact, just to be sure, I rewired everything just last night, taking particular care with the wiring from that pickup, and the exact same problem still exists.
So far as I understand it, when a pickup goes bad, it just stops working. Is that only true of passives? Can the preamp be faulty?
Conditions are as follows:
Gently jostling the guitar does nothing.
Jiggling the connections does nothing.
Fresh batteries produce the same result (though the neck pickup works fine, so the batteries are not the culprit, anyway).
The pickup is right where it should be, about 1/4" away from the strings, as is the neck pickup.
I'm officially baffled. Any thoughts?
Anything played is only sustained for a few seconds before the sound dies out completely. It's only slightly quieter than the bridge pickup (which is unusual in itself), but overall, it just sounds, for lack of a better word, damp. As if I had draped a Kleenex over the strings before playing.
Stranger still: Occasionally, when the guitar is first plugged in, the pickup works just fine for a minute, and then reverts back to the same condition.
I checked the solder joints. In fact, just to be sure, I rewired everything just last night, taking particular care with the wiring from that pickup, and the exact same problem still exists.
So far as I understand it, when a pickup goes bad, it just stops working. Is that only true of passives? Can the preamp be faulty?
Conditions are as follows:
Gently jostling the guitar does nothing.
Jiggling the connections does nothing.
Fresh batteries produce the same result (though the neck pickup works fine, so the batteries are not the culprit, anyway).
The pickup is right where it should be, about 1/4" away from the strings, as is the neck pickup.
I'm officially baffled. Any thoughts?
