Alembic Guitars Club
Alembic products => Owning an Alembic => Troubleshooting => Topic started by: edwardofhuncote on January 17, 2026, 12:22:22 PM
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Got a intermittent problem with my Little Darling guitar. I think it may be the jack, but it may be something else. I say that, because sometimes I can wiggle the cable in the jack and the guitar will work correctly for a while. That shouldn't work. What's happening is; one (usually the bridge), or sometimes neither of the pickups work when the guitar is first plugged in. This last round of testing, the neck pickup decided to stop working but the bridge pickup was.
Before someone suggests exercise the pots and switches, already did... many, many times. (I was highly motivated because a sale was riding on success) I tried every cable in the house. Opened three packs of batteries. It. Doesn't. Work.
So far I discovered a little buffer amp chip loose in it and secured that so that it wasn't shorting out against the shielding. Not sure if that had anything to do with it but it worked for a while after I did. I suspect I just got lucky and wiggled the right thing, and it's worked back loose again.
So I'm down to pulling the electronics out and sending them back or attempting to replace this jack locally. How difficult are these mil spec SwitchCraft jacks to replace? I can't even see how you get them out... anybody here ever done one?
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For what it's worth, neither pickup is working now. With any cable or any amount of jiggling. No output... I have a dead guitar. Kinda' makes me think not the jack but something else.
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I've never heard of one of those jacks failing. They are rated for something like a million insertions with welded palladium contacts.
i think you better send the guts in for a talking to.
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It looks like it may be possible to disconnect all the electronics from the jack leaving it in the guitar...(?) and just mount them to a rigid piece of scrap for the trip.
That sound right? Or does this jack come out somehow?
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The jack is held in the guitar with a wood screw. There is usually a modular connector to leave the jack in place. You can keep it mounted in place at first since it seems like it would be the least likely cause of the issues you are observing. Weird!
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Thanks Mica, I'll get on it this afternoon... need to clean up a place on my workbench for this one. Kind of a mess in there right now. 🙄
*Got them removed from the guitar easily enough. Mounted on a piece of 1/4" plywood, in order. I left the jack in there, for as you say, least likely to be culprit.
The only thing I could point to as a another angle... before dismounting, I plugged up again, and got nothing. So I popped the battery out and switched it. The guitar came to life and functioned normally, both pickups on, no crackle or static, worked fine. I took the battery back out and put another in. Nothing. No output. I tried another, the power came back again. I took it out and immediately replaced it. Dead. This suggests to me there may be an issue with the power supply. Indeed when you touch the 4-prong modular connector that comes from the battery to the jack it pops and crackles. I tried to snug it but it made no difference.
That's really all the help I can give the guys in the shop. Hate to leave it at that but it's all I got. I'll run these over to the FedEx terminal Tuesday. I reckon let me know what they find out?
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Just to finish out;
The guys checked out the Darling electronics and found nothing out of order... so that left us with the unlikely situation of a failed jack, more likely a poor crimp in the modular connector from the jack. Mica sent a new one back with the set just in case, and I finally had some time yesterday to get into it. My shop is such a mess that this one was fixed using a combination of the kitchen table and the couch, and a buncha' trips to the shop and my tractor shed twice looking for stuff. Why? Well...
I had to do some testing before putting all this mess of wiring back in. These jacks must be the first thing they install because it would be impossible to replace one without removing the electronics first. I had the advantage of having mine still mounted on my little wood board... the pickups are still in the guitar, so all I had to do was connect a battery to the clip, and connect the jack to power. I tried the tested electronics first with the old jack still in the guitar. It worked sporadically if at all, just as before. I disconnected it and connected the new jack just laying loose... with a [snap] of a guitar cable, the problem was solved. I tried everything to make it fail. I switched back to the old one; same fault. Switched back to the new one, fixed again. So now that I'm confident this is the issue... how do I get the suck-egg thing out of there?
These sidejacks are not just any sidejacks. Like everything else Alembic does, they are overbuilt to the extreme. Like, for a million insertions, Mica said. They are mounted with a rather stout wood screw from the inside of the control cavity, up under the outer edge. You really need a small right-angle screwdriver to get at it properly. I have one. I actually have a set of three, somewhere. I can't remember offhand what I used it for last, but it wasn't this... I'm guessing something work-related. I looked in every drawer in the shop that made sense, then trudged out to the shed and went through a couple toolboxes in there. Once the thought occurred to me it was entirely possible that I'd taken that set to work with me and left them, I gave up the search and improvised this substitute, made from a tiny 1/4" ratchet wrench, an extension, and a hex-drive Phillips bit. That was all it took to start it loosening. The old jack slipped out easily. I put the new one in its place, one dab of glue in the screw hole, and snugged it back down using the same tool. After that, it was the delicate nerve-wracking matter of reinstalling electronics, followed by the collet knobs. Here's the hack for spacing those too, if you need one; cut a slot in a business card and slip it around the mounting nut. Slip the knob in place and snug it. I like to orient all 4 of mine alike.
Soooo... that's the long way around changing out a sidejack, if you ever have to. You probably won't. Check the plug... that's probably what it is anyway.
Thanks Again to Mica and the Alembic Shop for the help and advice. 😊
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Congrats, nice work, that’s a beautiful guitar! :)
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Good to hear you got it working again!
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Very nice.