Bridge 57/08 lower volume

[Tucson Thump]

Last year on this used SC245 I had what turned out to be a cold solder joint causing the neck pickup to cut in and out. Fixed.

The other day I was recording several guitars to choose which one I wanted to use and I noticed the guitar now had a problem with the bridge pickup being about 1/4 the volume of the neck pickup at the same volume setting. Happens when the pickups are chosen together or when just the bridge pickup is chosen. Has nothing to do with the height of the pickup or the pole pieces.

As the tech isn't open I'm open to learning the path to troubleshoot this problem.

How would you go about approaching this problem on a step by step basis?

Thanks!

Mark

 

[bodia]

@garrett to the house phone

 

[Alnus Rubra]

The first thing that comes to mind and it is only a thought and not definitive.

Okay disclaimer out of the way.

The cause for the lack of volume on your bridge pickup, could be that the magnet has been de-gaussed (lost its magnetic force).

This is only a suggestion, so don’t take it as The Gospel according to AR!

Hope you get to the root of your issue.

 

[shimmilou]

Grab an ohmmeter and check continuity in the circuit, starting with the reading across the pup, you should see some reading in the thousands of ohms (6K, 8K, etc). Move the selector switch to the neck position when reading the bridge pup, to isolate the bridge pup from the circuit.

 

[pac90]

Steps?

Take a small philips head screw driver
Remove the screws on rear cavity cover
With guitar plugged in and bridge pickup selected:

hit strings and press on wires in bridge circuit to find loose connection.
Since its only on bridge, could be something as simple as one of the bridge wire solders needing re-flowing

If you have a soldering iron you can do this easily enough

If you search on youtube, bareknuckles soldering, they recently released a few videos on soldering pickups

They have different wiring diagram though, so find your own from PRS main website, support, custom support, schematics

 

[garrett]

Yep, good stuff. If you had a cold solder joint before, you may have another. Wouldn't hurt to reflow the solder joints along the signal path of the bridge pickup.