Help troubleshooting Seymour Duncan STC-2C-BO Preamp battery drain in a Squier Bass VI

Have you gotten lazy and quit unplugging it after play?

 

They don't appear to have a stellar performance record; amazon is reporting a 20% failure rate. (1 failure in 5 reviews, not a large sample.) Before you give up completely make sure the circuit board isn't contacting the shielding (if any.)

 

Make sure the negative of the battery is not shorted to ground in some manner. Use a continuity setting on your multimeter or use the ohms setting

 

My first thought is that somewhere the battery is shorting to ground. If you go over the electronics and can't pin it down to anything, send me a PM, and I will let you know the right person to contact about this at Seymour Duncan.

 

Yes, when you put in a 1/4" instrument plug it makes contact between the ring & sleeve.
So, with the jack *disconnected, check for continuity between the ring & sleeve.

*you only need to remove the lead from the ring terminal in order to check

add: if the preamp is working you can do what Sissy Kathy recommends in the next post

 

I don't think you need to disconnect anything. Setting it to volts, if there is a short there it will read 0; if no short it will read 9 volts.

 

Yes, but the short could be anywhere. If you don't disconnect it you won't have isolated the problem.
We already know there's a short, now the trick is to find where.

Isolating components is a good start.

(but be more clever than me & check for the voltage drop instead of disconnecting it)

 

NO, you are checking the jack, the pre still works, so if the jack is operational you will still read 9 volts. With the pre working you have to be getting 9 volts there, unless the jack is shorted.

 

DOH!, you're right. There will be a voltage drop if it's not shorted.

(if the pre is working)

I'll bet the jack is shorting

 

Whether or not it can be repaired is contingent upon how it shorted. Very often the contacts that touch the male jack are making contact and you can just bend the ring terminal contact out a little. For the short term that will hold, for a long term fix I would still replace it with a Switch Craft 1/4" stereo female jack.