My fly has fallen ill - please help

[Avocadosashimi]

Hello everybody,

my Fly is a Deluxe from 2006 (with a wounderful mintburst finish) and it has some kind of electronic issue that I can't figure out:
When I siwtch to the piezo pickup, all I hear is static noise, like on old radios. The magnetic pickups seem to work fine, but I feel as they have lost the high end of their frequency spectrum. The instrument sounds very warm and bass-heavy, so maybe I'm just being paranoid, but in comparison my Epiphone Les Paul has more high frequencies than my Fly. Does anybody have an idea, what might be wrong?

About a year ago, one cable from the battery compartment got lose, and it had to be soldered on again. This work was carried out by a professional, but I feel like he did not have too many experience with Flys, so maybe something got messed up there?

If anybody could give me some advice, I'd be really thankful. I also can post a foto from the electronics compartment, if that helps!

Best wishes,
Avocadosashimi

[mmmguitar]

Welcome!

I also can post a foto from the electronics compartment, if that helps!

Please do. It reads as though a wire has come loose. Your magnetic pickup signal passes through the piezo preamp where both are then outputted to the jack - So if the mag signal is being outputted (albeit in a degraded way), then that narrows the issue down to either a piezo signal path connection, or a fault of the preamp itself (which is still produced, and easily replaced).

[Avocadosashimi]

Hello mmmguitar,

thank you for the quick reply!
I have attatched two photos of the electronics compartment. One shot from above and one in an angle to show the three dimensional structure around what I suppose to be the piezo preamp.

I've also attatched a recording of my piezo pickup. At the end of the mp3 I briefly switch to the magnetic pickups and then back again.
Strangely, sometimes I hear the static noise from the piezo, even when only the magnetic pickups are employed. The piezo-noise only vanishes entirely, when I additionally turn down the volume knob of the piezo.

Also here are some recordings that I made with the instrument. (Please don't judge my playing - I recorded this quickly somewhen in the middle of the night) I recorded this on a Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister Deluxe 20 with neutral eq settings. Since the amp has a pretty good cabinet simulation, the signal went directly from the amp into the audio interface, so no microphone was involved. With the overdrive sounds I turned up the gain knob further with every recording, only using the bridge pickup. With the clean sounds I switched from bridge to middle to neck position. Although the amp itself has a way of sounding pretty warm too, I still feel like the guitar itself does not sound healthy (or is it really just my paranoia?).
https://we.tl/t-bQy6ILcPXk

Best wishes,
Avocadosashimi

[mmmguitar]

@Avacadosashimi, do you solder at all? If not, I'm afraid this seems to warrant dropping the guitar off with someone. I see no loose connections in your photos, and doubt that either of the repaired battery wires are the culprit; because you'd be experiencing mag signal dropout as well. Without having the guitar in front of me, your clips sound as though either the piezo side of the preamp is dying (It is the Fishman Powerchip BTW), or that your popcorn is ready. If the preamp needs replacing, then it's just a matter of swapping the five or six wires from the old preamp onto the new one. Note that the current Powerchip design is smaller than the one in your '06; and so will look a little different in the end.

Do you have a T/R/S cable to test whether the preamp outputs the same mag and piezo signals in stereo mode?

I didn't have any luck finding a youtube example of what the preamp would sound like if you had one of the more common piezo issues between the saddle element and preamp (e.g., one element shorting the others, a broken connection between where the element leads are summed on the underside of the bridge and the preamp input, etc.). If anyone else has experienced their Fly making those noises, I'm hoping they'll chime in.

[Avocadosashimi]

Hello mmmguitar,

I did none of the soldering on this guitar. When the cable from the battery compartment got lose, I brought it to a guitar shop, who did the soldering. The lose cable was fixed, but the problems with the piezo still continued.

Yes, I do have that cable and I will record some samples in the following days!

[mmmguitar]

Yes, I do have that cable and I will record some samples in the following days!

Feel free to record or share samples if you like - But it’s not necessary beyond your learning whether the problem is intermittent (that is, changes with a mono/stereo connection) or constant (a component failure or broken connection).

Though I’m happy to help via messageboard posts , if you’re unable to work on the guitar yourself, the preamp still being produced and sold means that a tech should be able to diagnose and repair the guitar at the same time.

That being said, please let us know how this works out. Every documented experience helps other Parker owners.

[chrisandrews]

Could be dry joint on the board from piezo pickups. Looks a little messy.
You can always test the piezo saddles by desoldering the main bridge piezo wires and touching the hot and earth on a jack lead, tap the piezo element with small Allen key and see if you get any sound