AB45 Pre Amp

[jrbass]

    I have a AB45 5 string acou. bass the output of the D and G strings is much lower than the others.If I touch the saddle of the G it buzzed loudly,Anyone know of a better replacement

[kwilliamson333]

Mine does it on the D string. No volume out of D.  I also have a huge problem with the B and E strings raddling terribly when I play open or on the lower end of the fret board.

[Tony Raven]

Anyone know of a better replacement

Yes -- take it to a professional repair technician. But start by putting in a NEW battery -- you'd be surprised how often people ignore problems caused by this.

Apologies, but IME most people assume that all guitars come from a world where there's universal drop-in replacements for every part AND that anyone with a screwdriver can do it in five minutes. Easiest (of course) are solid-body electrics, & I've bought a few quite cheaply after the owners rendered them unplayable.

Acoustic-bodied guitars are more difficult than that to "home mod" with any success.

Unless you have previousl installed or replaced a piezo-saddle pickup system, I wish to warn you that it's quite easy to do more damage. As in: you might go from having one bad saddle to making the entire circuit useless.

The only production basses I've ever seen to use a similar piezo bridge system were the Parker Fly Mojo & the Ibanez EDA, both apparently with the Fishman Mono-Rail II (a.k.a. Ibanez Gibraltar) bridge units. I have never seen these for sale on the open market. They seem to have been dicontinued years ago in any case.

On the EDA, each saddle has its own little "trim pot" adjustment accessible through holes in the back cover, so that the string-to-string sound can be balanced. The AB45 seems to have such holes. If you didn't know that already, you SHOULD NOT be doing anything MORE complicated.

[ubersanger]

I have a AB45 that actually had he A string lower in output than the rest of the strings straight from the factory. I had to crank the A pot all the way up and all the other pots way down to balance. I popped open the panel and the electronics and wires seemed to be in order. I then proceeded to lightly  tap each individual saddle with my finger with the guitar plugged. Low and behold the saddle on the A was much louder than the rest on account that I had the trim pot cranked on it. So I knew the piezo was working as it should. That lead me to believe there was a contact issue between the saddle and the string. I unwound the string, cleaned up the saddle and string, but it didn't seem to do much. I took a look to see how the height adjustment worked and noticed the angle of the saddle front to back was a bit different on the A than the others. The height adjustment on these saddles have three screws, two in front, one in back. I lowered the back part and increased the angle so it was more in line with the other strings, without messing with the action overall. The result was more of the string was now in contact with the saddle and low and behold, the problem was fixed. Not sure if this will help anyone else, but might be something to check out if you are having the issue.

Note that this solution only applies to the versions of the AB45 and AB40 with the monorail style adjustable bridge. I imagine this problem may pop up  after adjusting action of the guitar if they don't also take into account the front to back angle of the saddles and adjust all three screws.