Mysterious problem with Sterling bass

Or maybe it's not mysterious. I don't know guitar electronics well.

I have a Sterling Ray 34 that I picked up "new" from a seller on Reverb about a month ago. I put new in quotes because it arrived with all the plastic wrap on it but had a fair amount of dust on it and the volume pot was making noise when I turned it. Figured it was just dirty.

Had my local shop set it up and clean the volume pot. Everything seemed peachy until a couple days ago, when the bass started making lots of scratchy/static noise intermittently, with some pops mixed in. Didn't matter if I was touching the strings or not.

I changed the 9V battery for a new one but it didn't stop. Playing without a battery resulted in no scratchy sounds. Today, I was playing and there was a pop and the sound cut out completely. The volume knob was also making a scratchy noise again when I turned it.

I took the battery out and the sound was normal through the amp but it was very low volume. Also, if I pulled the cord out just a little bit, the full volume would come back.

Tried my other bass and it worked fine, so it's not an amp or cord issue. I just don't have any idea what it is. Could it be a bad volume pot? Or is it the plug?

Thank you in advance.

 

Alright I’ll check that out before I mess with anything else. Hopefully that’s all it is. Frustrating that’s happening on a new bass.

Thank you!

 

So the problem went away for a couple weeks, and then it came back full on. It's consistent enough now that I can accurately pinpoint the symptoms.

When I turn the bass EQ knob past about 30%, the sound completely cuts out from the bass - nothing comes out. It just stops at a certain point. When I turn the bass EQ knob back down, the sound comes back on. It's like an on/off switch. And there's the scratching sound when I turn the knob. So there's something wrong there.

I've emailed Sterling about getting a warranty claim started and heard nothing after 4 days so I'm getting frustrated. I'm probably going to just bring it to a local shop this week and forget about the warranty, and perhaps not buy a Sterling again in the future.

 

Edit: They finally reached out and are arranging to have the bass fixed at no cost to me. Good to go. Thanks for the input everyone!