Hello,
I bought a five string ATK new from a shop in Maui probably about 1999. While tone and playability were respectable, an unfortunate issue with the instrument had the battery dead about every week to two weeks without it being plugged in (short in the system that local luthiers could not trace, believing it to be in the motherboard).
As I went out of town for about one month before I discovered this, and as the owner of the shop and I had a mildly adversarial relationship at the time, my short sighted solution was to change the battery, or expect to every time I would plan on playing the instrument. My alternative solution was to leave the majority of the bass playing to my regular bass player.
As careful as I was with it, a band mate pulled the connector off the wires (which was of course an unavoidable eventuality) just before I left Maui last year. The instrument has remained in the closet while I have tracked the bulk of a new CD. Having come from radio shack with new connectors and a soldering gun, I was taken aback to discover the wires disappearing into the motherboard with no immediately obvious place to solder. -with that in mind, i carefully stripped the insulation off the new connector wires, and began that same process on the existing wires (thinking I would twist the pairings) when disaster occured in the form of the negative wire falling/breaking off at the juncture of the motherboard with only the barest nub left (visable only through a jeweler's loop).
Now I don't know what to do. Of course, I was getting this bass together as I need to record some bass tracks to finish a CD, and I have moved from Maui where I left my bass player (I'm a guitarist at heart, and usually leave the thicker strings to fingers dedicated to that playfield).
I do realize that a better solution would be to find the short in the system which probably resides in the mother board, and therein allow me to properly fix the battery connection too.
Any help, -connections to Ibanez, ideas.... would be gratefully received.
Triggerfish

Hi!

I own an ATK 305 and 300. Thankfully neither of them has electronics issues similar to those you describe. I think, however, that the most likely cause of your bass' problems is the output jack.

Bear in mind I'm at work not at home so I can't check this out at the moment on my ATK's.

The output jack on the ATK's is notorius for being about the only piece of unreliable hardware on the instrument. I am not an electronics genius, but I believe that most active basses (likely to include ATK's) use a stereo output jack. The tip and sleeve are connected when a cable is plugged in, and the other connection acts as a switch to turn on the preamp. If there is a fault in the jack which results in the preamp being switched on at all times, it would explain your battery problem.

As far as soldering the battery connector back on, I did a similar thing to my 5 string (pulled off one of the battery connection wires. IIRC, I had to remove the knobs and actually take the preamp board out of the bass to be able to solder the new one back on. But I managed.

Best of luck. They are great basses, the ATK's. Sorry your experience hasn't been the best!
Steve

Thanks for the benefit of your experience Steve.
I think i will find a local electronics guy to do it as the tolerances on the board seem very slim. -And I don't know that a replacement is easily found if I foul it up.
Triggerfish

the jack should be a normal stereo jack (on 90% of active basses this is the case).

The tip of the jack is your signal from the preamp...the outer part, that's where all the ground is connected to...the middle bit, that's where the battery negative is connected (and only the battery negative)...

the way it's supposed to work is...when the mono chord is plugged into the bass, the plug connects the battery negative to the ground, acting as a switch to turn "on" your preamp...

keep in mind, all pre's don't work this way...my carvin AC40 doesn't work this way (it uses a mechanical switch on the jack)...I'm not a fan of this...the simpler, the better IMO.