Friday, October 31, 2025

Got it!

 

Last week while playing with the local guys, my Emerald quit.  As in: no sound.  When I looked down at it, I could see the pickup closest to the neck had caved into the body... "Well, that isn't good."

I messed with it a bit a couple days ago, and got sound out of it.  Thought maybe I had it fixed.  I was wrong.  Today, armed with a bright light, some magnifying glasses, needlenose pliers, and three tiny screwdrivers I went after it...


 That is laying on my desk/guitar workbench.  The red aloha looking thing is a nicely padded quilt that I put on the desk, generally when changing strings.  Looking inside, I could see the issue: there was a spring missing from the mounting bracket on the pickup.  I shook the guitar, and other than the pickup rattling in there, I could hear something else... yep, I think that wayward spring is still inside the guitar.  More shaking and holding upside-down, and I got the spring out.

That was the easy part.  I tried reaching my hand in there to get the spring back in place, but my hand blocked my view (looking inside the soundhole).  The deck has an electric height adjustment - I moved it up, and lowered my chair, to get my head at the right height...



 A long handled needlenose pliers let me get the spring in without my hand in the way; the light and the magnifiers let me see how to get that spring back into that tight space.  Here it is, back in place (looking inside the soundhole...


 The rest was easy, and... the Virtuo is sounding good again.  I adjusted the height on both pickups to get the balance that sounded best to my ears.

I'll be playing out on Sunday with the local guys, and I would prefer to use this guitar.

 

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