Acoustic woes

[joeystrange]

I played an acoustic gig last night, just out singer with an acoustic guitar and me on an acoustic bass.
The bass is a cheapo Stagg that I bought a little while for the purpose of doing a few of these gigs that we had booked. It's nothing special, just a regular electro-acoustic with active EQ and one of those built-into-the-bridge pickups.

I've used it a few times before and it's been fine but last night, for some reason, there was no output from the A string. All of the others were fine but the A was completely dead.

Does anyone have any idea what might have caused this or how to fix it? Other than getting a new pickup?

[icastle]

Well the pickup is generally a single piezo 'strip' under the bridge, so if it works on three of the strings then it should work on the fourth as well.

Take the strings off and gently lift the bridge out of its slot.
Is there anything down there that would stop the bridge from sitting flat against the pickup?

If not then change your strings.

HTH

[joeystrange]

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1381588530' post='2241070']
Well the pickup is generally a single piezo 'strip' under the bridge, so if it works on three of the strings then it should work on the fourth as well.
[/quote]

That's what I thought so it seemed odd that one string would be dead.
I'll try your suggestion out and see how it goes.
Thanks.

[Roger2611]

I had a Washburn AB10 (in fact 2 Washburn AB10's) both had virtually no output from the E string, PMT said there was definitely a problem with both bases (but unfortunately didn't say what the problem was) I replaced it with a Washburn AB5 which had an even output across all the strings...so by the looks of things it may not be uncommon on a cheaper acoustic bass to have issues with volume levels across the strings