Problems with K&K Twin Pickup!!!

musiccityuker

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Installed a new K&K Twin pickup in my uke a couple of days ago. Worked perfectly all weekend. Fired it up this morning and the sound was SOOOO DISTORTED... waaaay over modulated! Straight amp too... no chorus, reverb, flange or anything. Tried my Eleuke and it worked fine. Tried a couple of different cables... same problem. A good shake pretty much ruled out loose parts or a loose transducer. Anyone ever encountered a similar situation with a K&K? Thanks
 
Installed a new K&K Twin pickup in my uke a couple of days ago. Worked perfectly all weekend. Fired it up this morning and the sound was SOOOO DISTORTED... waaaay over modulated! Straight amp too... no chorus, reverb, flange or anything. Tried my Eleuke and it worked fine. Tried a couple of different cables... same problem. A good shake pretty much ruled out loose parts or a loose transducer. Anyone ever encountered a similar situation with a K&K? Thanks

Do you have a preamp with battery? If so, check the battery.

John
 
Ok, I kind of figured that but thought you might have added a preamp. A lot of people don't realize how fast some preamps can eat the battery if you leave it plugged in.

Is it distored like cutting out, or like an amp turned up way too high? I'm assuming you've tried rolling the amp gain back and it didn't make any difference?

About the only thing I can think is if one of the sensors either went bad or maybe the element actually came in contact with the soundboard, somehow? I've not used the K & K sensors but most of the soundboard transducers are basically like a miniature microphone element inside of a damping disk housing that serves to hold the element and keep it lifted off the sound board a little bit. If the element got pushed forward where it was actually touching the soundboard I could see that causing pretty bad distortion.

Years ago I experimented with placing small condensor microphones inside acoustic guitars - it was very, very easy to overdrive the microphones and produce some pretty terrible distortion.

Since it's a twin, I'd try removing first one sensor and then the other to isolate the problem.

John
 
Yaaa... definitely an overdrive distortion type of thing. BUT... fired it up late last night (one last time!) and it worked perfectly! Definitely an intermittent problem. Will keep working at it. Might have to pull it out and try a new unit!
 
Yaaa... definitely an overdrive distortion type of thing. BUT... fired it up late last night (one last time!) and it worked perfectly! Definitely an intermittent problem. Will keep working at it. Might have to pull it out and try a new unit!

That really sounds like it might be the transducer directly touching the body - perhaps one of them has the mounting "tape" or whatever you used off to a side so that the unit can touch the soundboard. I hope you get this worked out for yourself AND because after seeing your posts about installing it, I bought a single big shot to put in my Mainland Red Cedar tenor! I may hold off until I hear of your success!

Good luck!
 
Got It!

Gmoney... it was my bad. As you suggested, one of the two transducers had fallen off and was lying on the bottom way in the back of the uke behind the back brace. Used a small hand-held automotive mirror and flashlight to inspect. Pulled off the strings, fixed the problem, restrung the uke, plugged it into the amp and VOILA! It works fine now. I'm going with your plan this time... I'm going to put a K&K in my soprano but this time I'll use the K& K Big Shot... only one transducer. I think two is overkill in a uke body! Anywhooo... very happy with the sound and would do it again... just be a little smarter this time around!

That really sounds like it might be the transducer directly touching the body - perhaps one of them has the mounting "tape" or whatever you used off to a side so that the unit can touch the soundboard. I hope you get this worked out for yourself AND because after seeing your posts about installing it, I bought a single big shot to put in my Mainland Red Cedar tenor! I may hold off until I hear of your success!

Good luck!
 
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