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A customer of mine recently returned from a month of gigs in a country with an extremely humid climate. He brought his acoustic guitar in as soon as he returned home as it was suffering a variety of damage from the high humidity. Beside some structural issues with the guitar his pickup (Baggs Element system) quit working while he was away. When I took a look at the pickup jack I noticed some corrosion around the jack, another result of the exposure to the high humidity.

I’m not an electronics guy, and do very little electronic repair other than replacing pickup jacks and connecting obviously loose wires, etc. Really simple stuff. I have a local electronics repair man do anything that is more complicated.

When I plugged a cord into the pickup jack (activating the preamp) I noticed that the battery heated up very quickly. I tested out a new battery and found that within 10 seconds the 9V was considerable warm and if left plugged in any longer it began to get hot. My guess is that the high humidity has damaged something on the circuit board of the preamp. What I’m wondering is if anyone can tell me what would cause a battery to heat up like this. My electronics friend is unavailable over the holidays so I thought I would ask here.

Thanks

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Battery is heating up because it is delivering more current than it is safely rated for. Look for a short between power and ground.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

When you remove the jack, which has the preamp on the backside, unscrew the preamp "cover" and trace the wires to the board - you may have corrosion that jumped and made a "bridge" thereby creating a short. I'd be surprised that much humidity would cause that to happen, but, the wires aren't that far apart on the board.

Seems like its shorting right at the input jack -- try a different cord/plug. Sometimes a stereo plug can short a mono jack.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks guys, I'll go back and take another look.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com