willliam_q Posted December 14, 2019 Report Share Posted December 14, 2019 I have had a set of ZAKK Wylde EMG 81/85s bought new in a PRS SE Tremonti for the last roughly 13-15 years. Only recently they’ve started to have a strong hiss from them. It’s particularly noticeable in high gain but Is in the background on relatively clean as well. I changed the guitar cable, plugged straight to amp and changed the battery. Can be a little intermittent and sometimes I think moving the guitar about can get it to change but it never truly goes away, I can’t see any lose wires. My passive guitars don’t have any issues, it’s only this one. Has any of you experienced this before or have experience of EMGs failing? can EMGs fail I.e. the preamp over time? Any other ideas? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted December 16, 2019 Report Share Posted December 16, 2019 have not had this problem on emgs myself... but have had this issue on old pedals. Inside the emg is an smd based preamp. I don't know this circuit all that well but I do know that the jist of it is that it uses one coil to sense the noise and this is subtracted from the other coil in a 'differential' preamp. I would assume this uses capacitors to set thresholds and caps can def dry out over time. as they dry out they loose capacitence... long story long - could be they have become victim to this. In theory you could try to use an audio probe and or multi-meter with capacitence test to find them and replace... but that would require the delecate process of degouping the emgs which are encased in epoxy. My guess would be that the effort would not be worth it. Again, this is just a guess. The fact that moving them changes things makes me think it is more likely an issue with an intermittent wire leading to/fro. If they are quick connect type you could test continuety to/fro... test whether it is both pickups. test if you are in fact sending 9v to them. that's about the best you can do. hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willliam_q Posted December 20, 2019 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2019 Thanks, that’s what I was afraid of but anything that’s powered by a battery can fail in my book. Will reflow the solder and if that doesn’t fix it I’ll likely replace them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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