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Bass Draining Battery


stewblack
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Bought an active bass. Immediately noticed the output was pretty weak so popped in a new 9v and all was fine. Just picked it up a few weeks later and nothing. The battery is totally flat.

When it is unplugged on a stand what could be draining the juice out of it?

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52 minutes ago, PaulThePlug said:

Are all the Harley Benton's looking at it... ganging up on it?

They are a mean bunch. You should hear them laugh at how much some of the others cost.

37 minutes ago, Teebs said:

Maybe the dog is secretly weeing on the bass & shorting the circuit?

toutou2.gif.a131575d659ffe0834d1963aa46a139d.gif🎸

:) 

Right that's it. I'm phoning the vets

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Just now, Happy Jack said:

It shouldn't draw current when no jack is plugged in but hey, it's a piezo, and there's probably also an on-board pre-amp. Lots of room for wiring to be done badly.

What you need now is for someone who knows what they're talking about to come along.

 

You played me brilliantly there Jack. I thought wow! A serious answer - who'd a thunk it, but you just reeled me in.

Bravo - beautifully done sir.

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Bizarrely enough, I was actually being serious.

A piezo (as I understand it, within the limits of my very limited knowledge, alternative facts are available) generates so little power compared to a magnetic pickup that it requires power to operate at all.

Some piezo rigs get their power from the instrument cable, but your bass has a battery which implies otherwise.

If you have a piezo pickup and an on-board battery, it would be odd to not have a preamp on-board too, also requiring power.

So your signal path is presumably battery --> piezo --> preamp --> amplifier and suddenly you have pretty coloured wires everywhere and blobs of solder where perhaps they shouldn't be.

 

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4 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

A piezo (as I understand it, within the limits of my very limited knowledge, alternative facts are available) generates so little power compared to a magnetic pickup that it requires power to operate at all.

Actually not literally, but you are right because it is quite complicated source. It generates high voltages (up to hundreds of volts), but the internal impedance is so high (mega or even gigaohms), that the output is weak without decent buffering.

The reason for this is that while the impedance is very high, a low impedance input (low compared to the piezo) would reduce and limit the frequency response. This is the reason the plain piezo tends to sound so thin. When the piezo output is buffered, any amp can handle the output and the sound becomes usable.

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17 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

 

A piezo (as I understand it, within the limits of my very limited knowledge, alternative facts are available) generates so little power compared to a magnetic pickup that it requires power to operate at all.

 

I'm not sure this is right. Anecdotally, I have 3 different Piezo systems (2 by KK Sound, one by Shadow) which do not require power and which generate enough signal to be heard when plugged into a random amp. They do all sound better with a high impedance it is true, so I would guess the battery is there to power the preamp and isn't required for the piezo.

The problem sounds like a short to me, either the socket is broken or the wiring has a fault.

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