Squealing and Spuddering Hum

[StoRMiE]

I went to hang out with my cousin and he wanted to play guitar, He plugged his Ibanez Glaive into his amp and it sounded like a bomb dropping. Whistling followed by a flubbing like a paper bag. He plugged it into my amp and it did the same thing, He said it fell off the back of the couch and it hasn't stopped doing it.

You can still hear the guitar, It just sounds terrible over top of the playing.

So I brought it back to my end to fix, Problem is I can't figure out the problem.

Active pickups, 1 vol, 3 way toggle.




Hold on a second, Is the tune-o-matic upside down?


Does it on both pickups, Get's worse with volume.

If I jiggle the input jack it makes the sound worse, But I can't get it to go away it just cuts the volume to 1/8th if I move it in a certain direction.
He never mentioned if it had a cord plugged into it when it fell, Shocked solder joints was my first guess, None of the wires popped off, It doesn't appear to be a grounding issue either, It's not microphonic feedback, It has fresh batteries(Checked 3 different sets).

Any ideas as to what's wrong with it? I'm stumped.

 

[greekdude]

Re: Squealing and Spuddering Hum

^^ did you check with a VOM? also note that EMGs do not require bridge grounding for the pups.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Squealing and Spuddering Hum

Haven't seen the wiring of a Glaive, but my guesses would be: a surface mount component damaged or broken off a PC board, battery power shorted or insufficient voltage to run active preamp (can happen for reasons other than battery itself), or the opposite - runaway voltage to the active electronics.

 

[StoRMiE]

Re: Squealing and Spuddering Hum

Haven't seen the wiring of a Glaive

You have now.






Don't know what to meter, too much spaghetti...

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Squealing and Spuddering Hum

There is only a 3-way switch and a volume knob in that cavity, so all those wires are going to something that must be behind the pickups. I think you are going to need to disassemble the guitar bit to find out what happened. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a PC board or something behind the pickups and a component either broke off or two things are now touching that aren't supposed to be touching.

 

[StoRMiE]

Re: Squealing and Spuddering Hum

I dug around in the wire and found the PCB inside of a plastic thing, When I popped out the pickups and put them back in the sound stopped and it was quiet and worked fine. When I went to raise the neck pickup back, It barely moved an couple of milometers before it started doing it again.








I don't see anything that could be wrong inside of the main cavity, I'm guessing there's a short in the wiring that goes through the body.

Still gotta set it up and what not after I fix it...


EDIT: Exactly what It was, Fixed it. In the process of setting it up for him, closing thread.