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Double Bass Fishman stopped working. Troubleshooting tips?
- Thread starter DILYSI Dave
- Start date
- Jul 19, 2000
- 2,014
- 2,224
- Disclosures
- Owner/President, Gollihur Music LLC
- Jul 19, 2000
- 2,014
- 2,224
- Disclosures
- Owner/President, Gollihur Music LLC
No worries!
A complete failure is pretty rare, and usually fairly easy to diagnose. Unless the pickup suffered a sudden stress that affected both elements - like having the jack yanked off the bass, pulling the pickup elements off the bridge with some force (and damaging the delicate wires to them in the process), I'd think it would be rare for both transducers to "fail" at the same time.
If you had a working pickup, and now you've got bupkus, I'd bet on a break in the pickup's cable, or a short or failed solder joint in the jack.
In fact, first thing I'd check is your 1/4" cable. Try a different cable, see if you get better results.
If you rule out your signal cable, open up the output jack for the pickup and see if you can find a failure there - broken solder joint, a short of the ground wire to the signal wire, etc. The jack itself could be broken, too - but it's probably sealed to the point where you won't be able to confirm that.
A complete failure is pretty rare, and usually fairly easy to diagnose. Unless the pickup suffered a sudden stress that affected both elements - like having the jack yanked off the bass, pulling the pickup elements off the bridge with some force (and damaging the delicate wires to them in the process), I'd think it would be rare for both transducers to "fail" at the same time.
If you had a working pickup, and now you've got bupkus, I'd bet on a break in the pickup's cable, or a short or failed solder joint in the jack.
In fact, first thing I'd check is your 1/4" cable. Try a different cable, see if you get better results.
If you rule out your signal cable, open up the output jack for the pickup and see if you can find a failure there - broken solder joint, a short of the ground wire to the signal wire, etc. The jack itself could be broken, too - but it's probably sealed to the point where you won't be able to confirm that.
Excellent advice from Mark. You can try the "wiggle" test on the cable as well. That is, with it connected, wiggle the cable at various points (especially at connection points) and see if you get anything from it intermittently. This often works as a quick way to find the offending connection.
Weird. Unpacked the gear, plugged it all up so I could find the culprit, and it worked fine. Tried shaking stuff to make it NOT work, and couldn't make it fail. 
- Jul 19, 2000
- 2,014
- 2,224
- Disclosures
- Owner/President, Gollihur Music LLC
Weird. Unpacked the gear, plugged it all up so I could find the culprit, and it worked fine. Tried shaking stuff to make it NOT work, and couldn't make it fail.
Sounds like what Bob G. (my Dad) has always called a "TZO" - a "Twilight Zone Occurrence."
