A silly question about batteries and being plugged in
 

So my #1 has a UST, so that means there's a 9 volt battery in there. All well and good. And as we all know, that battery is engaged when the battery is plugged into the cable. Don't leave you guitar plugged in all day, you'll drain the battery. Great. Got it.

However, my guitar strap doesn't really stick onto my input jack that well, so I have a little plastic doohickey which slides in there so I can wear my guitar with a strap safely when not plugged in.

My question is: does the plastic doohickey which goes in the input jack to secure the strap connect the battery, or does the battery only get connected because a guitar cable itself is conductive? That is to say, is it the metal, conductive qualities of the guitar cable that cause it to close the loop when it's plugged into the input jack, or is there a physical switch which gets triggered because something in the jack pushes one metal contact against another metal contact?

I feel like I should know this.

Good question
 

On my Taylors with ES the strap- jack drains the battery...

Another reason for a K&K, :)

No idea on other systems.

Remember to unplug!

Cheers

Paul

Take a look at Tapastring Strap Keeper. And yes, I am pretty sure that stickingg the plastic jack into your audio jack causes one of the contacts inside to move and make an electrical connection

I have one of these.
works pretty well.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...tchcraft-jacks
Ill have to say i always thought it
was the conductivity that triggered the batt
to drain. But it makes sense it would be a switch.
I keep learning here on AGF. :)

“or is there a physical switch which gets triggered because something in the jack pushes one metal contact against another metal contact?”

This is exactly how it works. The plastic doohickey will switch on the battery.
Quite possibly there is some system that uses the cable but I haven’t seen it.

Best to use one of the other strap retainers that don’t plug into the jack.

Cheers, _Roger

Some designs use the free short of the ring to ground of a TS mono plug into a TRS stereo jack to enable power. There are battery life measuring tools that count on that kind of connection so it can't be that uncommon.

A Fishman/Switchcraft Switchjack has a forth terminal which is grounded using a mechanical contact when anything, including a non conductive plastic strap lock, is plugged into jack.

The only switching scheme I've ever seen is the TRS one described by JF45 above. It seems strange to do anything else as:

Easily sourced
No moving parts
Reliable

If there is a "no thump" feature on the guitar that might explain it. Is there?

The Fishman/Switchcraft Switchjack frees up the ring for a second source.

I have worked on a few Switchjack's that had defects. I guess it is a lower volume product for Switchcraft and at some points in time was not up to their usual very high quality standards.

I'm aware of their existence since we explored the possibilities of dual sources back at a time when such ideas were revolutionary (it'll never catch on). It was a Hofner President and I seem to remember the plan was to blend a floating humbucker with a Barcus Berry Jnr. attached in the gap under the fretboard. It sounded amazing but we couldn't quite visualise the dual channel preamp that would be required to match the signals so we tried to take them out separately and mix externally. This would have meant sourcing the Holy Grail of endpin jacks you've just described and they were rare as hens' teeth at the time.

I gave up and bought a Takamine.