PRS 594 Output issues

[RonBatesMusic]

Hey Everyone,

I purchased a 594 SC Core new several months ago. It's been great, however, I've had many issues with it electronically. During a gig, the bridge pickup stopped outputting 90% or so of the signal. It got very, very quiet and dull sounding. In addition to the output issue, pulling up on the tone control to split the coil wouldn't have any audible effect on the tone. It would either just stay working as a humbucker or the coil would be split 100% of the time, no matter the position of the switch.

Upon taking it to my local PRS dealer for a repair, (they replaced the bridge vol pot and cleaned the pots) It was alright for a short amount of time. The issue persisted, so I contacted PRS PTC for help. I shipped them the guitar and received it a month or so later. Upon inquiring about the issue I was told they replaced the volume and tone pots for the bridge pIckup and it should be good as new. I've used in on multiple gigs now and it's been wonderful, until today.

I'm now only getting split coil tones from my bridge pickup.

This all seems to be quite a simple issue, but it's getting increasingly frustrating trying to figure out what's wrong, and I'm getting tired of spending money on this issue. I just want the guitar work. It's truly one of the best guitars I've ever played.

Has anyone else seen similar behavior with their 594s? Could I just have a lemon?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Herr Squid]

Sounds like that guitar should get checked for cold or weak/intermittent solder joints. I have an SC594 that had the worst-sounding bridge pickup I'd heard in 20 years. I screwed around endlessly with the tone pot and capacitors and resistors and whatnot. Finally one day I looked at the volume pot and thought "that solder joint doesn't look too good." Reflowed the connection of the braid to the pot casing, and that fixed it right up! IMHO PRS could stand to improve the QC on their electronics assembly and testing.

 

[Rider1260]

Since you have already sent it to PTC I would give them a chance to make it right , and believe it would be covered under warranty.
at this point with all the changed pots I would start looking at the pickup after I had metered and checked all the switches and pots, I would also have a second look at all the solder joints ,
Issues like this are pretty rare

 

[Glenn Gross]

Out of nowhere, the tone pot on my 2020 509 would intermittently fail. My guitar shop owner friend did not like the look of one of the solder joints and resoldered it. Fixed.

 

[JasonE]

I have never had an issue like this with a PRS core guitar. With that said, I am wondering if PRS changed something with their pot construction. I have a 594 that I just couldn't gig because the volume drop off that happened when I switched from my other guitars to that one was too drastic to keep my volumes out front consistent. I really like the PRS 57/08 pickups and I have them in a number of my PRS guitars. I decided to change them out.

I tested each one as I put them in. The first one I put in had no output. I discovered that the pot had gone bad during the install. I assumed that I must have heated the pot up too much when disconnecting and connecting the ground to the back of it. I was more careful on the second pickup to try to pay attention to not putting too much heat on the volume pot for that pickup. The same thing happened. Thankfully I had some PRS pots that I had bought a few years ago that I was going to put in a non PRS guitar because I like the feel of them. I swapped out both volume pots and life has been good since then.