How To Repair Piezo Pickup

Pickup Repair-Gotta make this quick!

Buddy Miller'south guitar has to be on stage with Emmylou Harris in 75 minutes!

Emmylou Harris' "Three Girls & Their Buddy" tour performed here in Athens, Ohio. It'due south a great bear witness: Emmylou with Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin backed upward by Buddy Miller'due south versatile guitar work.

Amplified audio-visual guitars are a big office of this show. Amid the forest of guitars on the stage, a standout was Buddy's m concert baritone built by Julius Borges. Information technology sounded great, so you'd never guess that a few hours earlier it was here in my store getting emergency surgery!

The Problem

Buddy had an undersaddle pickup installed a few days before, and now the two outside strings had almost no output compared to the middle four. This isn't unusual; I'll bet the installer had as niggling time to do the work as I had to gear up it!

I offered to assistance, and Buddy brought me the guitar at 1:45pm. His audio bank check was scheduled for three:00. That's just an hour and fifteen minutes! No time to conversation... gotta go to work!

First, check the slot

I checked the saddle slot for flatness with a Fret Rocker: if it'southward non apartment, the tool will rock from end to end. It turned out to be flat but I establish a few tiny, almost imperceptible, ridges in the slot lesser.

Checking the saddle slot with a Fret Rocker

I removed them with a micro chisel.

Cleaning the saddle slot with a micro chisel

Adjacent, check the saddle

The middle of the saddle measured .123" on my digital caliper, but the ends measured .127".

Maybe that means the ends are also snug in the slot, keeping the saddle from moving up and downward properly — explaining the weak output.

I marked the ends with a pencil, and stroked them over the coarse half dozen" fingerboard leveler to thin them. The pencil marks show where the file is working. Whatever remaining pencil marks signal a spot that didn't get filed (could be a low spot). I put the saddle back in and strung the guitar to pitch.

Information technology was now 2:15 and Buddy was standing in the shop waiting — nerve-wracking if you let it go to you! At 2:30, the output was ameliorate, but non perfect. I took out the saddle and thinned the ends a trivial more.

If I had more fourth dimension:

With a relief approximate, I'd measure the guitar top with and without string tension. The tension deflects the top by .010" (Figure 1). Armed with that info, I'd use a brace repair jack to lift the height past .010" and rout the saddle slot.

(Figure 2) This simulates string tension, so the slot stays flat after the strings go back on!

Notice how Julius Borges numbers each of his bridge pins from 1 through 6 so they always become dorsum in the aforementioned holes. Julius used fossil ivory pins for this beauty; he only cuts flutes into the two everyman strings — the others nest in advisedly shaped, notched holes in the span.

Each pivot is fitted by hand using a v-caste tapered reamer.

Buddy'due south happy!

At ii:45 the guitar was dorsum to pitch. Buddy loves his Waverly tuners (he tunes this baritone to B, E, A, D, G, B from low to high).

The strings sounded lots better, and he'll play it in the evidence tonight for the first time. If there were a niggling more time, I think we could pull even more sound out of that transducer by experimenting with other cord gauges. But information technology's 3:00 and time for Buddy's sound check. The bear witness must go on!

How To Repair Piezo Pickup,

Source: https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/fixing-an-acoustic-pickup-fastmdashit-has-to-be-onstage-in-an-hour/

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