The Steel Guitar Forum

My friend asked me to try and fix his Kramer guitar. It crackled plugging the jack in and out but no sound. He lost one of the saddle pieces under the strings and I made a single piece one out of plastic. I noticed the individual ones were plastic/metal. I wonder if this is the problem? I pulled the jack plug out from the sound hole and the wires look ok. I put one string back to try it, but no sound. Could it be the vol/tone module? The number on the module is CE852. One of the plastic bridge pins is missing. Someone have one, any color?
thanks, Ron

The pick-up on that guitar is more than likely, under the bridge. That piece of plastic will not work if that's the case. And that guitar is probably not worth spending money for a pick-up system, to fix it. As far as a pin for the bridge, they're available at most music stores.

when plugged in, shouldn't I hear something when I tap the metal piece with something metal?

Is the battery dead? There's likely one inside somewhere if the preamp is indeed "active" as stated on the control plate.

I popped the piezo pickup out of the saddle and see a braided ground wire going to it. Is there another conductor inside this wire as I don't see it? Battery is new. I did get a sound tapping the pickup with a metal screwdriver but it won't pick up the string when I put it back. Any ideas? I added a picture.

You mean it won't pick up only that one string? Are you sure? In your photo, in the bottom right corner, I see a bit of the slot in the saddle. Looks like someone put some shims in there. Looks like the transducer may not be sitting flat inside the saddle. Thats what it looks from what I can see of the slot in the photo.

won't pick up any string. I did notice the shims but the saddle isn't metal, appears to be wood.

For the piezo to pick up the vibration most effectively, the string must exert downward pressure on the piezo element, therefore the saddle must sit square and flat in the bridge slot.As someone stated above, it appears in the picture as if there are two shims, one of which does not span the entire length of the slot. This shim creates a gap between the saddle and bridge, so little string vibration will be transferred to the pickup.

If you remove the shorter shim, it should work. If you need the height, you will need to make a shim which spans the entire slot. Since you are getting signal when tapping, you can assume that the wiring and the electronics are in working order. The braided wire that you see is typical for an under the saddle pickup.
I should acknowledge that this pickup is an older design, in which the individual saddle pieces fit into the slotted one piece piezo saddle. I used to have a Takamine classical guitar with a similar design.

1 of the individual pieces that went into the pickup was missing so I made a 1 piece out of plastic. Could this cause it not to work?

Sure.