Variax 300 piezo died (in Australia). Are replacements available?

[novocasey1959]

I live in Australia. My Variax 300 has a dud piezo on the B string. Physical connections to bridge and internal board are live and OK, and there’s a very faint signal, but we can’t get the volume the same as the other strings. The diagnosis from my electronics engineer friend is that it’s most likely a dead piezo element. Google, Amazon and eBay searches for a replacement have proved fruitless. Can they still be obtained, and if so from where? Any help would be most gratefully appreciated. 

[psarkissian]

There are piezos available for earlier version Variax. It may have to be special ordered.

Log a Support ticket in your Line 6 account.

 

[hurghanico]

The piezo elements and the slots in the bridge where they are housed must make perfect electrical contact with each other otherwise the necessary ground contact does not work.

Tiny pieces of skin from the palm of the picking hand, sweat and dust accumulated over time that get between the piezo and the slot can compromise the grounding and therefore the proper functioning of the piezo with bad symptoms like the one you described.

Generally a thorough cleaning with isopropyl alcohol (it cleans perfectly, leaves no streaks and does not damage synthetic parts with which it may come into contact) of the piezo element (gently extracted from its slot being careful not to break the electrical wire that connects it to the invisible board underneath) and its slot, and doing if desired also a 180 degree rotation of the piezo to offer a new contact point to the string, brilliantly solve the problem of either the decreasing volume or the intermittent signal or the unnatural noise that can occur.

 

More than once in years of intense use and only when necessary I have put some piezos of my Variax 700 back into perfect working order simply by doing as said above and it has always been a success.

 

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