Removing 513 Pickups?

Perry

Perry

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Hampshire, UK
I tried searching for past posts on this so apologies if it has been covered before.

My 2011 513 has what I can only describe as a very microphonic neck pickup (or pair of pickups to be exact as it is actually two single coiled pickups twinned on a PCB).

I had my first post-lockdown gig yesterday and decided to use the 513 instead of the Custom 24. Clean and mild overdrive sounds were ok, though the guitar sounded a bit lively, but as soon as I used slightly higher gain for our Santana number, the neck pickup started shrieking - on both clear and full humbucker modes. I am not talking massive amounts of gain/overdrive either. This is the only one of my guitars that does this. Today I tried getting round the problem with adjusting both the tone on the guitar and amp EQ, but no success.

My question is, has anyone had a similar problem with their 513 pickups? I am going to remove them and I do appreciate care is required due to their PCB mountings; one of which I suspect may be the culprit.

P.S. I am in the UK so returning it to PTC is unfortunately not an option.
 
Take your time and don't raise one side of the pickup drastically higher than the other side. This could cause the pc board to crack. Once you get the pickup out, maybe a small piece of foam in the cavity, under the pickup, would help eliminate any mico-vibrations the pickup may be experiencing. Vibrating on the height adjustment springs can cause a microphonic-like squeel.
 
Shawn@PRS said:
....... Once you get the pickup out, maybe a small piece of foam in the cavity, under the pickup, would help eliminate any mico-vibrations the pickup may be experiencing. Vibrating on the height adjustment springs can cause a microphonic-like squeel.
Click to expand...

Good point, thanks Shawn.
 
Hallelujah!!! Found the problem. But bear with me

Firstly, I (carefully) removed the neck pickup and, on first inspection, all looked well. The PCB was unmarked and had no apparent cracks or breaks in the tracking. Then I spotted an indentation in the cavity wood where one of the pickup springs had fallen off the screw prior to insertion and gotten wedged under the pickup as it was tightened down.

So, taking Shawn’s advice above, I reassembled everything correctly but with a thin piece of foam under the pickup to eliminate any vibrations. But no change- the pickup was still very microphonic and squealed in any of the two humbucker modes.

So, I decided to take the resistance reading from each pickup at the jack and strangely, the neck pickup in any humbucker mode gave an error reading, although at low volumes it appeared to work correctly into an amp. Running out of ideas, I pressed down on one of the single coil twin half of the pickup and suddenly the reading shot up to a healthy 11.7 on the meter. I adjusted the height screws so that that half sat slightly askew, 1/2 millimetre above the other and quickly plugged in to an overdriven amp and eureka! ....a warm pleasant overdriven neck pickup sound with no squealing and huge sustain. This can only point to the PCB where true contact is only made when one of the twin single coils is slightly misaligned.

So, the next question is, has anyone disassembled one of these pickups before and how easy was it (I’m quite confident to give it a go myself). Or, does anyone know of someone here in the UK who is proficient in repairing the pickup PCB? I’m presuming I cannot purchase a new replacement from PRS....
 
Perry said:
Hallelujah!!! Found the problem. But bear with me

Firstly, I (carefully) removed the neck pickup and, on first inspection, all looked well. The PCB was unmarked and had no apparent cracks or breaks in the tracking. Then I spotted an indentation in the cavity wood where one of the pickup springs had fallen off the screw prior to insertion and gotten wedged under the pickup as it was tightened down.

So, taking Shawn’s advice above, I reassembled everything correctly but with a thin piece of foam under the pickup to eliminate any vibrations. But no change- the pickup was still very microphonic and squealed in any of the two humbucker modes.

So, I decided to take the resistance reading from each pickup at the jack and strangely, the neck pickup in any humbucker mode gave an error reading, although at low volumes it appeared to work correctly into an amp. Running out of ideas, I pressed down on one of the single coil twin half of the pickup and suddenly the reading shot up to a healthy 11.7 on the meter. I adjusted the height screws so that that half sat slightly askew, 1/2 millimetre above the other and quickly plugged in to an overdriven amp and eureka! ....a warm pleasant overdriven neck pickup sound with no squealing and huge sustain. This can only point to the PCB where true contact is only made when one of the twin single coils is slightly misaligned.

So, the next question is, has anyone disassembled one of these pickups before and how easy was it (I’m quite confident to give it a go myself). Or, does anyone know of someone here in the UK who is proficient in repairing the pickup PCB? I’m presuming I cannot purchase a new replacement from PRS....
Click to expand...


Do the pickup cavities have electrodag painted in them? If so, the PCB may have been shorting out on the dag?
 
Perry said:
Close, but they don’t appear to be a technical centre from what I can see ☹️
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that.. I cannot for the life of me remember where I had picked up that notion.. I have a 513 in the middle position on my Brent Mason... it creates a fantastic tele like rawk.. great for rhythm work.. I look forward to hearing you have ‘sorted’ your problem
 
Perry said:
Does that mean my PCB may not be faulty?
Click to expand...

-It's hard to say. If you left the foam in the cavity, that should have shielded the PCB from the dag, so it might very well be a bad board.
-PRS UK does have a repair shop, but I don't think they'll fix a bad board. You might need to take that to an electrical specialty shop.
-Your guitar has the PCB in the electronics cavity, correct? Unfortunately our current 513/509 pickups are not compatible with that board. The current pickups need to be hard-wired, so if you eplaced one pickup, you'd need to replace them all, along with the switches.
 
Yes, PCB under each pickup and another PCB in the control cavity.
Looks like I’ll go for a good electrical technician to repair the pickup board.
Thanks for your input Shawn
 
Curses! This morning, the problem had returned and, after a day on the workbench, I think has finally been solved......I hope.

So, by way of concluding this post, there were two faults with my 513 neck pickup, which not only caused it to be very microphonic, but also howl at higher volumes with moderate gain.

Firstly, upon removing the bridge pickup, I gently pulled apart the micro connector to the pickup’s PCB and noticed one of the six wires had come away from the connector. Repairing this was fiddly and resulted in the wiring loom connecting the pickup to the master PCB being only just long enough. Realistically, it is now too short by about 2cm and will make removing the pickup in future rather difficult and I need to replace this ASAP.

Secondly, the pickup itself has six solder ‘blobs’ visible on the PCB - one at each corner and two halfway along the length of the PCB, each attaching the PCB to the underside of the pickup. This time I could see that one corner was raised slightly where the PCB had come away from the pickup’s underside due to the solder blob on that corner breaking away from the pickup. I resoldered this while holding the corner down against the pickup and all looked sound. A quick check with the multimeter showed a healthy signal once again to the output jack.

I do need to replace the bridge pickup’s PCB-to-main PCB wiring connection loom. I haven’t been able to attach a pic, but it is about a metre long and has a tiny micro connector at each end. Does anyone know if this item is available from anywhere as a separate item?
 
Well, by way of an update, my 513 was back to its old trick again of squealing neck pickup on high-ish gain settings.

Using my digimeter, I was just exploring everything was earthing correctly when I found that there was continuity between earth and the 2 single coil pickup mounting screws nearest the neck. None of the other 8 pu screws on the guitar are earthed. Changing pu selector and mode switch positions made no difference to the continuity readings. I’m no electrician but could this be what is making that pickup more susceptible to squealing?

EDIT: I removed the pickup again and nothing was amiss. All checked out with regards to pcb connections and overall pickup readings. I think it was just coincidence that this pair of screws were in contact with the shielding paint as they screwed into the body. Back together again, the guitar behaves as before - shrieking on highish overdrive. By comparison, my core Custom 24 sings beautifully with this healthy level of gain. The 513 body is very microphonic too - tapping my pick anywhere on it sounds very loud through the amp. On all my other guitars, the tapping sounds dull and muted. I’m at a loss
 
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