travismoore Posted March 25, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2014 Ok thanks for the info, I haven't grounded to the strings or anything though just shielded. The LG/SG was actually a typo in my first post they are LJ/SJ I just need to learn to proof read stuff before I post it. Is the next port of call to test the pots are giving the full 25K as you had me do before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted March 25, 2014 Report Share Posted March 25, 2014 You can if you wish, but I reckon you're unlikely to find anything untoward with 3x brand new pots installed. I'm running out of ideas. If the wiring, battery volts and components are all OK the only things I can think of is that the low volume is an indication that the pickups are faulty (both pickups equally??), what you're plugging into is causing the output to appear low (maybe you're plugging into a mike input on your audio interface rather than a dedicated instrument input? Do you have an input attenuator accidentally engaged on the interface?), or it's just a characteristic of the pickups themselves. With one pickup volume full up, tone maxed out and the other pickup set to 0 you should be seeing over 300-400mV output going to your amp when playing moderately, which should be plenty loud. Adding the 2nd pickup will probably push the output to 500mV and over. I note that other EMG pickups (EMG81 or 85 for example, 3VAC) boast much higher output voltage than the LJ. Depending on which version datasheet you look at the LJ can either push out 0.8VAC or 2VAC. Maybe the set you have are working fine - they just have low-ish output? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travismoore Posted May 30, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2014 (edited) Hey, Sorry for the slow reply I finally have time to look at this again. I was thinking about this a lot and when I had these pick-ups in a bass previously (some years ago) the output was definitely normal/on par with my other basses. I am plugging it into an instrument jack input which has a "guitar line in" boost switch which is on, so the input coming from the bass must be low. I have also run it through my amp and I have to push the volume to double(or more than that) to equal the same level as my other basses. You mentioned millivolts, how would I go about measuring that? Then at least I can confirm/rule out if the pick-ups are just low output. Thanks again for you help Edited May 30, 2014 by travismoore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted May 30, 2014 Report Share Posted May 30, 2014 Any multimeter should be able to read down to milli-volts. If your multimeter doesn't have an auto-ranging function you probably have a switch on the front which allows you to measure in selectable ranges up to 200mV/2V/20V/200V. It's just a way of expressing sub-integer numbers. 1mV = 0.001V. 100mV = 0.1V. Millimetres (1 thousandth of a metre). Milligrammes (1 thousandth of a gramme). Milli Vanilli (1 thousandth of a Vanilli) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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