Moving from onboard pre-amp to a pedal?

[Dark Sky]

My onboard Fishman has been acting up. It cuts in and out, and randomly goes dead. A known good battery doesn't help. I haven't done any troubleshooting yet but I have a simple question.
If I condemn the pre-amp and decide to use a pedal such as the BOSS AD-2, would I simply connect the two wires from the pickup to the two wires of the guitar output jack?
I really want to get the electric side of this guitar to be totally reliable.
Thanks for your time!

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Dark Sky

My onboard Fishman has been acting up. It cuts in and out, and randomly goes dead. A known good battery doesn't help. I haven't done any troubleshooting yet but I have a simple question.
If I condemn the pre-amp and decide to use a pedal such as the BOSS AD-2, would I simply connect the two wires from the pickup to the two wires of the guitar output jack?
I really want to get the electric side of this guitar to be totally reliable.
Thanks for your time!

Hi Dark Sky…
I'm not sure how to change it out. My Olson (32 years old in 2024) has worn 4 different pickup rigs in those 32 years.

I just had a tech change it out. And one of the last conversions was to take the active electronics out and put in a passive pickup, which I run through an external preamp (now a ToneDexter for the past 5 years) to the board/amp.

Reliability is imperative to many of us, and the repair may be a simple loose wire, or it may be a pickup system failing. Hope you find a reliable answer…

I noticed you've been hanging around collecting 'wisdom' without commenting for a couple years!!! Good on you for jumping in…

[Charlie Bernstein]

Welcome, Dark Sky!

And hm. That's a great question, and I don't know the answer. The real question is, do active and passive pickups use the same kind of transducer. If they do, then your idea should work.

Looking forward to reading what someone who knows has to say.

[Dark Sky]

Thanks for your response. I haven't been here too often since I've been focused on my electric guitars and amplifier. I'm moving more to my acoustics these days. I've got a lot of different interests and spend way too much time on varous forums, when I actually should be practising on my guitar.
Back to my problem, I'll have to confirm whether the problem is actually the pre-amp or maybe it's the pickup before I do anything. I've seen some suspiciously cheap knockoffs of my pre-amp on line. It might be worth buying one just for troubleshooting I suppose.
I'll be back with more questions as I dig deeper. I doubt if I'll ever have much in the way of solid contributions in this crowd. I'm at the shallow end of the gene pool here....

[Mobilemike]

Welcome!

What you're thinking is possible, but would need a bit more information about the system, most importantly - is the pickup actually passive, or does it need power somehow from the preamp?

If I were in your situation, I would probably remove both the preamp and the pickup from the guitar, then install something simple and passive like a K&K Pure Mini and run that to an external preamp.

-Mike

[Dark Sky]

Thanks for the further thoughts and ideas. I "think" that it's a piezo pickup but am not really certain. I could reach out to Fishman for some advice also.

It may be a few weeks as we are going to be traveling in our rv as of Friday, but the guitar is coming with me. I'll post what I eventually find and how I proceed.

[Dark Sky]

I put out a question on Fishman's web page and got a response within an hour. They are asking for a description of the symptoms which I provided. The tech guy did say that the pickup that was installed with my Presys system will not work directly with an external pre-amp pedal. If I end up going the pedal route, I will get some recommendations from the pedal maker. More to come on this, but it may be a while.

[shufflebeat]

My experience would suggest the jack socket is the most likely problem point. The contact points themselves can wear out and often there’s a switch mechanism incorporated into the socket which means the battery earth (ground) doesn’t get connected.

If you want to experiment with a new system this is a golden opportunity but if you liked the old sound then it may be a simple fix.

[Dark Sky]

I got my problem resolved. I carefully inspected all of the wiring connections and the two Fishman circuit boards and everything looked very good. Then I noticed that the the 'ring' nut on the outside of the guitar jack hole was almost exactly level with the jack body itself. It seems this was keeping the male cord jack from making a solid connection to the jack body. I removed the jack and set it up to protrude slightly further. Now the jack body protrudes very slightly beyond the ring nut and I'm getting a solid connection. Just wanted to provide the end of the story.
On another note, I began guitar shopping 'just in case' the fix on my guitar wasn't economical. I had no idea how many acoustics of various companies are made in China. This included a $1300 Eastman. I played about 10 guitars and the only one not made in China was a Yamaha.
As it turns out, I didn't like any of the ones I tried as well as I like my present low end Fender, also made in China.

[Rudy4]

Originally Posted by Dark Sky

I got my problem resolved. I carefully inspected all of the wiring connections and the two Fishman circuit boards and everything looked very good. Then I noticed that the the 'ring' nut on the outside of the guitar jack hole was almost exactly level with the jack body itself. It seems this was keeping the male cord jack from making a solid connection to the jack body. I removed the jack and set it up to protrude slightly further. Now the jack body protrudes very slightly beyond the ring nut and I'm getting a solid connection. Just wanted to provide the end of the story.
On another note, I began guitar shopping 'just in case' the fix on my guitar wasn't economical. I had no idea how many acoustics of various companies are made in China. This included a $1300 Eastman. I played about 10 guitars and the only one not made in China was a Yamaha.
As it turns out, I didn't like any of the ones I tried as well as I like my present low end Fender, also made in China.

The "recessed jack barrel" is probably the #1 cause of faulty installations of pickups such as the K&K Pure Mini. I've actually had two friends call me about pickups that didn't work after they were installed and a simple adjustment to the inner nut on the barrel jack fixed them right up. Good for you that you fixed it so easily!

[Brent Hahn]

Also, with some Fishmans they do this Factory MacGyver where they take a Switchcraft dual-purpose jack (guitar audio + battery connection), slice off the solder lugs, and then solder the jack directly to their circuit board. When a cable is plugged in and the jack isn't mounted so tight that it can't twist, twisting the cable will stress the solder joints and they'll crack and become intermittent.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Mobilemike

Welcome!

What you're thinking is possible, but would need a bit more information about the system, most importantly - is the pickup actually passive, or does it need power somehow from the preamp?

If I were in your situation, I would probably remove both the preamp and the pickup from the guitar, then install something simple and passive like a K&K Pure Mini and run that to an external preamp.

-Mike

Yup. K&K and JJB pickups sound good, and once they're in, you never have to think about them again.

And external preamps tend to sound better than onboard preamps. So I'd take Mobilemike's advice.

[Dark Sky]

Good advice, no doubt. In my case, the sound of my guitar when electrified is more than fine for my purposes. I've resisted the temptation to spend time on my rig and its tone and am trying to put all my emphasis in becoming a better guitar player. With my electrics now functional, I am working on using a looper to add some instrumental lead work on top of the songs I'm playing. That's going to keep me entertained for quite a while.
At some future point I may feel the urge to upgrade but for now I'm back on track to hopefully get better with the tools at hand. Thanks for the commentary, I appreciate it.