Members blindfolded Posted March 3, 2003 Members Share Posted March 3, 2003 What happens when an emg pickup battery is dead? Does the guitar stop working? I've never owned a guitar with emg pickups so I don't know. I might install a pair of emg pickups on my guitar but if something happens when the battery dies out then I won't bother installing them (I have a guitar with a floyd rose) so I don't want to keep on changing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members edeltorus Posted March 3, 2003 Members Share Posted March 3, 2003 Hi. My experiences with battery equipped guitars: I have two of them, Not an EMG Pickup, but they have preamps and active pickups of some kind. They don't cause any trouble. I changed the batteries after two years of use, and they where almost new after this long time. The only thing that I do is to unplug the chord when not playing. I measured how much juice the preamps need, and it was somewhere in the microampere range, so you can play some years before the batteries will dry out. It's still a good idea to change them every two years if you don't want to have battery acid leak into the guitar. If you like the EMG's go for it. Nils Pipenbrinck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members edeltorus Posted March 3, 2003 Members Share Posted March 3, 2003 Oh well.. Forgot something. I can't speak about the emg's, but when I remove the battery from my guitar they are silent. Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Reeko2 Posted March 3, 2003 Members Share Posted March 3, 2003 Yes,But the interesting part is when the battery is in the process of dieing.It did to me, while I was playing at my church (on my Parker). First thing you notice is a volume decay. Soon it becomes kind of fuzzy and distorted (not in a good way) and lower still in volume. Then it dies. The interesting part was that my battery would come a little back while I was not playing trying to figure out what was happening. So, I would change some chords, then mess with the amp and have sound back. That would last about 10 secs before it would die again. (I never new that on a Parker, the battery was in use even for the magnetic pickups. Something to do with the onboard mixer between the Piezo's and the mags). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members callous Posted March 4, 2003 Members Share Posted March 4, 2003 Yes, you will know something is wrong long before the batteries are dead. Your tone will suck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members breid Posted March 4, 2003 Members Share Posted March 4, 2003 You have to keep an eye on them. Those batteries can last so long that you forget about them and if you play regularly, the effect on your tone comes so gradually you may never notice the degradation until it starts fuzzing. On a little-played Jackson guitar, I actually thought I had a short for about 3 mos until I remembered the active pickups. I don't use actives anymore, but when I did, I changed them once every 6 mos on my backup guitar. If that had been a full time axe, I might have needed more. And experiment with batteries if it uses a standard 9 volt. They do have an effect on your sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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