Hopefully easy active wiring question

smuhhh · #1 07-12-2009, 03:21 PM

I have an old Samick bass that I got about 10 years ago and it crapped out about 3 years ago. At that point I had a new bass and just retired it as it isn't great anyway. So as i'm getting ready to buy a new Spector this week, I'm kind of in the mood to play with my old bass. I opened it up and found that the negative wire running from the battery has become disconnected. Now this will probably come across a really stupid question to some of you, but where does that go? I'm guessing somewhere on one of the circuit boards in there... maybe its brand/model specific and I'm asking something that is impossible to answer... not too sure

thanks

jbrew73 · #2 07-12-2009, 04:28 PM

it usually goes to the output jack. the jack is used as the switch so when you plug the cable in it turns on the power.

smuhhh · #3 07-12-2009, 04:30 PM

That does make a ton of sense. I sort of thought of that and tried putting it on the jack, and while I did get a buzzing noise, I didn't get any sound from the strings... hmm... maybe i have another problem with it.

**line6man** · #4 07-12-2009, 05:18 PM

The wire connects to the ring terminal of the output jack, so that when a mono cable is inserted, the cable will short the ring terminal to the sleeve, which switches the power on to the preamp by connecting the batteries negative terminal to ground.

Connect it to the ring terminal of the jack.

**line6man** · #5 07-12-2009, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smuhhh

That does make a ton of sense. I sort of thought of that and tried putting it on the jack, and while I did get a buzzing noise, I didn't get any sound from the strings... hmm... maybe i have another problem with it.

You probably connected it to the tip terminal, right?
The buzzing you heard was DC offset from the battery being connected straight to your signal.

smuhhh · #6 07-12-2009, 06:43 PM

Thanks for the tip! I'm going to go try that right now. On a side note, I just removed the frets... I figured, the thing doesn't work right now anyways, so if i screw this conversion up, no big deal, on the other hand, if I do a decent job, I can always get a tech to get it working again.