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Troubleshooting a Gitty Preamp: Distortion and muddy tones

Troubleshooting a Gitty Preamp: Distortion and muddy tones

In this post, you'll learn what to do if your preamp-powered cigar box guitar sounds muddy or distorted.

Hi all! It's Shane Speal. 

Two weeks ago, I started having trouble with my main 3-stringer.

It's a rod piezo-electrified build with a pre-amp that allows me to sculpt the CBG tones beautifully.

But what I was experiencing were distorted tones and an overall crappy sound.

I thought the problem was that the rod piezo lost contact with the box top.

To improve contact with the piezo, I drove a screw through the box top/soundboard and into the neck underneath.

Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem.

After mulling it over for a bit, what I later realized was that the pre-amp battery was weak. Duh!

What I learned was that even if the red pre-amp battery light-indicator is on, it's always smart to test your batteries.

Because after changing the 9-volt battery that powers the pre-amp, my cigar box guitar came alive with bold, sparkly, and very distinct acoustic tones.

Ahhh... I love the sound of a cigar box guitar!!!

Image from my book, Making Poor Man's Guitars, available here on CBGitty.com.

8th Aug 2018 Shane Speal

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