It happens time after time. A person buys a guitar, plays it for a while and then finds the jack socket is loose.
Every guitar I've had, every guitar any of my mates have had. It's always the same. You get your tools out, turn it 'till it's tight again, then some time later, it's come undone again. And so it goes on, until one day the guitar goes dead.
What happens - After repeatedly tightening the outside nut up, the wire inside becomes twisted and under stress, so eventually one of the wires attached to the socket comes off and you're left with a dead guitar. As many guitarists don't have much electronics knowledge, (they just wanna play, man!) they don't know what to do, but it's really simple to fix, and it's really simple to prevent.
1stly, prevention is always better than cure, so when you buy an electric guitar, do the following. Unscrew and remove the socket plate. There will be a nut on the inside and one on the outside, and these are what hold the socket in it's place, and these are what come loose, because the inside one is never tightened up. Well, when it's all put together, you can't reach it can you? So you need to make sure it's tight, then stop it moving, with some glue, varnish, araldyte or whatever.
You can do it to the outside nut as well, but many people leave this as they'd rather keep blobs of glue etc. on the inside of their brand new, shiny guitar.
Now if there's no signal coming from the guitar, and you've been suffering from the loose socket thing for a while, it's almost a dead cert that one of the wires has come off.
I borrowed a friend's guitar recently, and he advised me there was an electrical glitch with it, and was there anything I could do? Nothing on the guitar worked, and there was absolutely no sound coming out of it, so naturally he was really worried about it. My first thought was, one of the signal wires is broken, I'll check the jack socket, and after removing the plate, that's exactly what it was.
All I had to do was strip back the wire, re-attach it with a little solder, and tighten and treat the nuts as described. Put it all back together, and lo and behold, it works beautifully.
Every guitar I've had, every guitar any of my mates have had. It's always the same. You get your tools out, turn it 'till it's tight again, then some time later, it's come undone again. And so it goes on, until one day the guitar goes dead.
What happens - After repeatedly tightening the outside nut up, the wire inside becomes twisted and under stress, so eventually one of the wires attached to the socket comes off and you're left with a dead guitar. As many guitarists don't have much electronics knowledge, (they just wanna play, man!) they don't know what to do, but it's really simple to fix, and it's really simple to prevent.
1stly, prevention is always better than cure, so when you buy an electric guitar, do the following. Unscrew and remove the socket plate. There will be a nut on the inside and one on the outside, and these are what hold the socket in it's place, and these are what come loose, because the inside one is never tightened up. Well, when it's all put together, you can't reach it can you? So you need to make sure it's tight, then stop it moving, with some glue, varnish, araldyte or whatever.
You can do it to the outside nut as well, but many people leave this as they'd rather keep blobs of glue etc. on the inside of their brand new, shiny guitar.
Now if there's no signal coming from the guitar, and you've been suffering from the loose socket thing for a while, it's almost a dead cert that one of the wires has come off.
I borrowed a friend's guitar recently, and he advised me there was an electrical glitch with it, and was there anything I could do? Nothing on the guitar worked, and there was absolutely no sound coming out of it, so naturally he was really worried about it. My first thought was, one of the signal wires is broken, I'll check the jack socket, and after removing the plate, that's exactly what it was.
All I had to do was strip back the wire, re-attach it with a little solder, and tighten and treat the nuts as described. Put it all back together, and lo and behold, it works beautifully.
About the Author:
M Withers is author of an electric guitars blog. He is a keen enthusiast and has been playing the electric guitar for over 25 years.
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