Please help! I have a show in an hour!

[steviep77]

I have a Sterling by Music Man Ray34 Active Electric Bass. I'm playing a show with my high school jazz band in an hour. I was getting everything ready and wanted to make sure my spare battery work. I took the battery I was currently using out and through in the new backup, and lost a ton of sound. I firgured that was just a bad battery so I throw the one I was using before back in and that ones not working either. So I'm pretty sure the "active" part of the bass isn't working. Not sure how I broke it. I don't have time to take it to a shop to get fixed. Is there something dumb I'm just doing? Or is there something easy I can fix? Should I just use a pedal to try to bring the sound up? I'm really scared

[steviep77]

Sorry for the abundance of spelling errors, I'm in panic mode right now.

[eyeballkid]

Did you put the.battery in with the polarities wrong? You know, positive to the negative instead of to the positive receptor...

[kbakerde]

Does it have a switch or a push/pull knob to turn the active on/off? See if that works.

Next I would check the batteries connections, make sure you don't have a broken solder joint.

Good Luck!!

[steviep77]

Looks like I found the problem. One of the wires fell out from were the battery connects. I have no clue how to deal with this. Electrical tape? Or does it need soldered?

[nashvillebill]

Solder is best, if you are in a bind though use whatever means you have at your disposal. Can you post a pic?

[delta7fred]

If you need to be using it in an hour then (carefully) strip a little bit of insulation from the broken off wire and trap the bare wire between the battery and the connector.

If you pick the wrong connection it will do no harm, just still not work properly. Swap to the other and you should be good to go.

[nashvillebill]

I also would be calling any friends you may know that has a bass and ask them to let you borrow it.

[MostlyBass]

go to radio shack and get a 9V battery connector.. cut the old one of the bass, twist the wires together and add electrical tape... worked fine on my bass

[steviep77]

Sorry for the crappy quality. It's just completely out. Just called the local repair shop and no answer.

[GreenWithEnvy]

This was me at one time. All my basses are 100 percent passive now. One less thing to worry about.

Hope your gig goes OK!!!

[throughthefire]

A simple fix.

Run up to the electronics classroom, or the physics classroom (at a pinch, the car shop), and ask someone to solder it back for you.

HTH

Pete.

... and when you get a moment, ask one of the lab technicians to give you a 10-minute course in soldering. It's worth it's weight in gold (or silver-flux solder....)

[Febs]

Your best bet given that your show is in a few minutes is to do what delta7fred said in post 7. It looks like there is already enough of the wire exposed that you won't have to strip any more of the insulation. Just put the bare wire between the battery terminal and the battery holder and the battery terminal and snap the holder into place. Essentially what you're trying to do is to connect the wire directly to the battery terminal, and you're using the connector just to hold the wire in place against the terminal. That should get you through your show, and then you can have it properly repaired.

[nashvillebill]

Febs and deltafred have a good idea. This is the black wire, so it's negative. The battery's negative terminal is the BIG terminal on the battery (which is the small terminal on the battery holder).

[paparoof]

interested to hear what happened with this.

[Evil Undead]

Me too