[open-road-matt]

Hey Folks,
I took a trip a bit south yesterday to a music store to have some jacks/pickups soldered up and one of my set ups seems to have a problem. The one that is a bit strange is an Allparts stereo 1/4" jack with a K&K mini on the ring and ground and 3.5mm jack on the tip and ground.

The 3.5mm jack is for a Sunrise magnetic sound hole pickup. The guy that was doing the work soldered a 14" Mogami cable to the tip and ground of the 1/4" jack (this is part of a Sunrise installation kit) and then set about soldering the 3.5mm jack to the end of this cable. He kept screwing it up and each time he would start over, he would cut a little bit off of this cable.

When he finally got it soldered on, he hands me the jack and the once 14" cable is now down to about 6"! The point of using the mini jack and plug for the Sunrise is so you can remove it if needed. These plugs are supposed to sit right under the sound hole. With only a 6" cable coming off the 1/4" jack, the connection will have to take place way down in the guitar. And the Sunrise pickup only has an 8" wire on it so now I'm worried that it won't even be able to reach the jack.

I should have had him fix it and put the right length of cable in there but this had already taken over 2 hours! I had my son with me and we still had another jack to rig up. The only solution I could come up with was to have him lengthen the cable between the Sunrise and the mini plug so it would reach the jack. He was able to wire up the second jack with no trouble.

Last night, I got both jacks with pickups installed and the output of the Sunrise that needed the cable extended is significantly less than the other Sunrise. I can make it work with my Pendulum SPS-1 if I crank the volume of the Sunrise channel all the way up on the rack unit. (with the other Sunrise the volume is at 12 o'clock) My hope was to use a Fishman Pocket Blender for the times I don't have my SPS-1. The "good" Sunrise works fine with the Pocket Blender but the "bad" Sunrise is unusable. By the time I get the volume up to where I can hear it, there is a loud hum.

Do you think it is the cable set up that is causing this or could I have a bad Sunrise? If a Sunrise has an 8" cable attached and the installation kit comes with a 14" cable for the mini jack, that is 22" of cable total, minus a bit for the work to solder the mini plug and jack. Without pulling everything out to measure, I would guess that what I have in cable length with the "bad" Sunrise is close to this.

It seems like I have three options:

1) pull everything out and try to get it fixed.

2) use a Sunrise SB-2 preamp when I use the Pocket Blender. If I go this route, can someone tell me if the best way to go would be to use a very short stereo cable to go from the 1/4" to the SB-2 and then a long cable out to the Pocket Blender? I am guessing that getting the SB-2 as close to the 1/4" jack as possible would be best but maybe I'm wrong.

3) give up and only use this stereo setup when I have my Pendulum. This is all on a second jack in my CA guitar. I have the iMix in the other jack. I had to pull out the iBeam to install the K&K but I still have the Element and I could just run that through a PARA DI and be done.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks!
Matt