No battery, no pickup :: Mitchell MX400 QAB NAT [4.4 lbs]

View fullsize

A very quilted-figure Mitchell acoustic in for a dead pickup.  The first thing I always check with acoustic pickup issues is the battery.  As the voltage drops, so does the headroom of the onboard preamp eventually fading away to silence.  This happened to be missing a battery all together so a fresh 9V brought the pickup back to life.  The player was surprised that it was just the battery as he had tried replacing it himself.  I've had other pickup fixes in the shop solved by a new battery so maybe I just get lucky sometimes. 

No signal :: Partscaster Fender Tele [7.4 lbs]

View fullsize

A relic'd partscaster Tele with a history of random signal loss in for a while-you-wait repair.  This has been through a couple other shops in the area and ended up on my bench for an emergency fix last week.  I did the usual checking of all connections by eye, with a meter, reflowing suspect joints and physically stressing connections while the guitar was connected to an amp.  I even checked the resistance of both pickups to make sure there wasn't a broken coil.  Something I did ended up fixing the no-output issue, but I don't know exactly what was the cause.  Not exactly the most reassuring of repairs, but I made sure to shake, prod and bang on the guitar as much as I could before it left with the player.  Good thing it is a relic!

Note that the fix got the player through the gig so now only time will tell if whatever fix I did will last.

View fullsize

Getting lucky with a dead pickup :: Yamaha FGX-412SC [5.2 lbs]

View fullsize

This pickup hasn't worked in years and the player decided to let me give it a shot.  I got lucky on this one.  First thing to check on acoustic pickup issues is the power.  A fresh battery didn't solve the issue so I started checking connections with a multimeter set to continuity (beeps when a connection is good).  The culprit turned out to be the battery box.  All of the connections were good, but their wasn't enough pressure to hold the battery leads up against the contacts in the battery tray.  I used some foam to take up the slack and push the battery forward in the tray and voila! 

View fullsize

After resolving the pickup issue, here's a quick string-up from the vlog: