513 pickup replacement

[hammeron]

Think I might have a bad pickup on my 513. Anyone know if I can order a pickup from PRS or am I going to have to ship it to the PTC

 

[John Beef]

Have you opened up the cavity and checked all the wires and stuff? I know there's a PC board in 513s, never seen one in person, but maybe one of the pickup wires has come loose?

 

[justmund]

Did you buy the guitar new?

 

[Dusty Chalk]

I had a dead spot in a 513 I recently purchased used, it ended up being two broken joints between the pickup and the circuit board which broke during shipping. It did not end up being expensive -- can't say about yours though, I'm not a professional.

 

[wardog]

Contact prs, could be covered under warranty. If you are comfortable with trouble shooting, give it a go! Might be an easy fix.

 

[hammeron]

The front pickup keeps cutting out intermittently. I can get it back by fiddling with one the two front pickup heights (It's only the front pickup group-the middle pu and back group are fine). I took it to someone and he thought it might be one of the pickups or the wire, but he was quick to admit that he was pretty baffled by the electronics. I'll be taking it to a local PRS service center so they can make the determination, just wanted to see what my options were...I've never seen any 513 pickups floating around out there. I bought it used, so warranty is not in the cards.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Sounds like a plan! Yeah, that definitely sounds like a bad connection between the pickup and the circuitboard. Er, not definitely, probably, I am not a technician.

 

[László]

Most intermittents come down to a simple solder joint repair.

 

[Dancing Frog]

Not on my 305 when the tap wire went intermittent. That was a replace a pick up.

 

[aPeRSon]

The front pickup keeps cutting out intermittently. I can get it back by fiddling with one the two front pickup heights (It's only the front pickup group-the middle pu and back group are fine). I took it to someone and he thought it might be one of the pickups or the wire, but he was quick to admit that he was pretty baffled by the electronics. I'll be taking it to a local PRS service center so they can make the determination, just wanted to see what my options were...I've never seen any 513 pickups floating around out there. I bought it used, so warranty is not in the cards.

I had exactly this issue on my previous 513, which I bought brand new. As others have said, the pickup is mounted on a circuit board, and the issue appeared when I started messing about with pickup heights. Take care to make any tweaks evenly, moving the two humbucker screws at the treble side together, a little bit at a time (exactly the same process for a bass side adjustment) and watch out for one coil moving too much more than it's neighbour - the slight twisting of the pickup can cause the solder connection(s) to the board to fail.

The good news is that it's a really easy fix - just pull the pickup and just dab a hot, tinned soldering iron on the connection whilst squeezing the coil(s) against the board and you're good to go!

 

[Maertl513]

Depending on the production time a 513 can come with PCB or hand-wiring in the electric compartment. Until end of 2013 all core 513 have a PCB in the back.
As a new feature/improvement PRS connected the electric parts by hand-wiring with production circle 2014. The aim was to deliver the best tone. Before that hand-wiring was an option for 513 manufactured in the Private Stock rooms.

PCB vs hand-wiring
http://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/public-viewing-into-prsi-abdomen.14488/

Herr you see the construction of 513 pickups
http://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/513s.1983/page-7#post-219351
http://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/513s.1983/page-8#post-219812

The two singlecoil pairs share a PCB each. Adjusting the pickup heights at neck or bridge may cause broken electrical lines on the PCB if the angle was too wide while handling the four screws.

Best suggestion: Call PTC for any assistance. If one of the PCB is crap/broken they can handle with that problem because those 513 are really special.

Regards,

Mart

 

[Guitar Scott R]

I wanted to try some conventional humbucking pickups in the PRS 513 guitar which has 2 full size single coil pickups wired together in the humbucking pickup spots. Because the pickup cavity was wider than usual there really wasn't a place to put screws in for the humbucking pickup rings. To solve this, I used a piece of a wooden dowel that could be attached to the side of the pickup cavity (inside), which allowed the pickup ring to be attached to that. This gave the option of choosing which humbucking pickups were installed. I took out the board and wired the pickups directly to the 5 way switch. I then took wires for the neck and bridge pickups from the 5 way switch and wired the 3 way switch so that I can combine the neck and bridge pickups in the middle position of the 3 way switch. The coil split is on a pull pot on the tone control.
The resulting change was a success and well worth the effort.
The before and after pics can be found here ; https://gtrscooter.imgbb.com/

 

[bodia]

I wanted to try some conventional humbucking pickups in the PRS 513 guitar which has 2 full size single coil pickups wired together in the humbucking pickup spots. Because the pickup cavity was wider than usual there really wasn't a place to put screws in for the humbucking pickup rings. To solve this, I used a piece of a wooden dowel that could be attached to the side of the pickup cavity (inside), which allowed the pickup ring to be attached to that. This gave the option of choosing which humbucking pickups were installed. I took out the board and wired the pickups directly to the 5 way switch. I then took wires for the neck and bridge pickups from the 5 way switch and wired the 3 way switch so that I can combine the neck and bridge pickups in the middle position of the 3 way switch. The coil split is on a pull pot on the tone control.
The resulting change was a success and well worth the effort.
The before and after pics can be found here ; https://gtrscooter.imgbb.com/

That's pretty cool. What did you end up installing?

 

[Guitar Scott R]

I put a Gibson 490R in the neck position, a Seymour Duncan Custom Strat in the middle, and a Tom Anderson H2 in the bridge position. I used those based on how they sound individually in this guitar as well as how they sound in combination together.

 

[bodia]

I put a Gibson 490R in the neck position, a Seymour Duncan Custom Strat in the middle, and a Tom Anderson H2 in the bridge position. I used those based on how they sound individually in this guitar as well as how they sound in combination together.

Sweet!