Any way of testing an acoustic guitar preamp?

BeardyAndy

I sold an acoustic and it came back because it wasn’t working through an amp, I admit I didn’t try it before selling as I don’t think I’d ever put a battery in it in the 5 years I had it!
You have to have the amp and guitar wound right up to get some sound out of it and the in built tuner is terrible, is there any way I can test it’s the preamp at fault before investing in a new one only to find out it was the pickup or a dry solder or something?

ICBM

If it's one where the pickup plugs into the preamp on a 2.5mm plug, you can make a cable with a 2.5mm jack on one end and a 1/4" plug on the other, so you can test whether the pickup is working.

If it's not the pickup, it's very likely to be an internal fault in the preamp and not very likely to be repairable - they're usually a nightmare to work on, which is one reason I tend to regard electro-acoustics as the work of Satan...

The other main one being that if you have to replace it and you can't get the exact same unit, you will usually have to do a fair amount of work to the guitar to get something different to fit.

What type of guitar and preamp is it?

BeardyAndy

Thanks @ICBM it’s a Tanglewood TW73 with a B-Band A3T I’ve found one on eBay new for £50. The connectors are all those fiddly little spade end fellas not a jack.

ICBM

If it's a B-Band it will almost certainly be the pickup itself. Various dealers sell replacements if you don't want to buy the whole system.

Unfortunately they're not compatible with any other pickup type or system - unfortunate because they're quite unreliable, even though they sound good when they work...

BeardyAndy

Oh crap, really? Sounds like a fiddly job! Thanks for the wisdom, I’ll look into it.

BeardyAndy

All sorted, exactly what you said @ICBM ;

managed to get a new one from RichTone music and took me about 10 minutes to swap out, it’s now working perfectly, thank you.

ICBM

Now sell it again quick before it breaks!