PRS SE Hollowbody II with Piezo comments /question

[RickF]

Hi,

I have gigged a bit with the my new PRS SE Hollowbody II Piezo. A couple things that I am a little surprised at. The battery compartment for the piezo is a disaster waiting to happen. Having the wires pull out with the battery compartment seems a suspect design decision at best. I know at some point one of the wires is going to break. I am quite perplexed at this design. There has to be a better way.

Second, I thought if the battery died or is in the process of taking a dirt nap it didn't affect the passive pickups only the piezo? While gigging I had my guitar connected using the mix instrument output (both piezo and passive pickups). I also had the acoustic volume set to 0. I was getting some noticeable distortion with only the passive pickups volume on. Once I replaced the battery everything was fine. I thought the battery could die and have no affect on the passive?

Is the distortion due to using the mixed output? Any info is appreciated.

Thanks,
Rick

 

[P.B.R.s]

Battery compartment is terrible, better designs have been around for years.
I could knock up a better design in 15 minutes, a CAD one would take a bit longer!

 

[Jo-]

My core HBII is 20 years old now and despite the nightmare of trying to actually get the battery detached (operation that involves a chopstick and a butter knife) and a new one replaced, the wiring has never broken…… yet!

And I get the same distortion when the battery is dying despite it also supposed to being just the mag pickups on. I always know the battery is dying when my electric tone starts to sound like crapatata.

 

[Roving_Drummer]

Is the distortion due to using the mixed output? Any info is appreciated.

Correct. Only the MAG input will work with a dead battery. Mix/Piezo input needs a working battery.

 

[Jo-]

Correct. Only the MAG input will work with a dead battery. Mix/Piezo input needs a working battery.

Correct me if I’m wrong. But the core HB has mix/mag and piezo outputs, while the SE model has mag and mix/piezo outputs. Therefore when the battery is dying/dead in the core model you can only use the mix/mag output which will always give the fizzy tone, but on the SE you can use just the mag output for normal electric tones.

So this would mean the wiring of SE outputs are superior to the core as you wouldn’t get the fizzy tone if the battery was dying???