Meet today’s patient. A Tanglewood acoustic which came to me with output issues. Sounded great acoustically but she was a shy one and refused to “speak up” when plugged in.

9 times out of 10 this is 1 of two things – either corrosion in the preamp circuitry/battery connections or corrosion in the jack socket, which is part of the switched negative side of the preamp circuit.

I usually tend to check both over just as good practice, but in this case there were no issues at all within the preamp itself, but a thorough clean up of the jack socket terminals instantly brought her back to life.

Thinking all was now good, I continued with the rest of the setup and got everything dialled in when finally, while tuning up the D string, that slightly tight spot became suddenly much tighter. I knew instantly it had sheared a tooth. Some of these are a right pain to get into the chassis of, to the point of making it not worth it. Luckily the back came off without much hassle and I just happened to dig out a matching gear. What? You don’t keep a box of old guitar tuner internal gear mechanism parts? You must be weird or something… 👀😂