Monday, August 6, 2018

Don't assume


Last weekend, a guy walked into the guitar store saying his on-board acoustic guitar tuner/ pre-amp was broken. It didn't work & while tuning, the guitar, it caused the high E string to snap (what...?). I happened to be there checking something out. 

So the store personnel took a look at the instrument's aforementioned on-board electronics & there was nothing amiss. It worked fine. The customer then said maybe it didn't work for that high E string (what... ?). Come to think of it, that might be possible because the under-saddle/ bridge piezo unit might be defective. After checking, again, nothing bad was discovered. 

The customer then shared that there was no response from the tuner so he kept going till the string snapped (duh!!). That's the very issue right there- over-tightening. If you suspect a faulty pre-amp/ tuner in your acoustic guitar, please do not keep tuning thinking that the sensors will eventually pick up some vibrations along the way. It doesn't work that way. I'm sure we own a smart phone & are able to download a tuning app to be used in such a case of emergency. So there we have it, a fault that remedied itself. 

1 comment:

YusTech said...

Sometime the saddle needs resitting or its bottom sanded flat. Probably it slanted forward overtime hence it looses solid contact with the piezo elements. Just my 2 cent sir.