New Phigas?

[foolofships]

I was sucking the life out of 9 volts every 3 hours. With Waldo's help I corrected the wiring issue. Otherwise everything else was first class.

OT - How do you know when the 9-volt is dying/dead? I mean is it obvious sound wise?

When it's dead, there's no sound, so yeah, pretty obvious. As the battery ages, it sounds fine, sounds fine, sounds quieter, sounds distorted, then nothing.

[Jon S.]

When I changed my battery Saturday it was down to 7.5 volts - guess I've been playing a lot lately!

[TI4-1009]

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay became the envy of Deadheads everywhere when he bought Jerry Garcia's "Tiger" guitar in 2002.

But upon getting the $850,000 instrument home and trying to play it, Irsay wondered if the venerable leader of the iconic rock band the Grateful Dead was sending him a disapproving message from the grave.

"I plugged in my amp cord, had my pick, turned on the amp, and nothing," Irsay remembers.
"I was like, What is going on here? Is the ghost of Garcia jinxing this? At this moment is he saying, No, you are not worthy to play my guitar'?"

Not so much.

After making a few calls, Irsay learned that the electric guitar needed a 9-volt battery he hadn't installed. Once it went in, the instrument worked just fine.

"But, for that moment, I was alone and I was really perplexed, you know, at what, exactly, was going on," said Irsay, who is worth $1.4 billion and ranks No. 312 on Forbes' list of the 400 Richest Americans.

[vwjodyme]

^^^HAHAHA! too funny
When I first got my OBEL installed I left the guitar plugged in like i used to with my other guitars. on the 3rd or 4th day it went dead. i had no idea why. i rechecked all the wiring and finally the battery. then couldn't figure out why batteries would only last a few days. thankfully i did a forum search here and found out batteries should last several months if you unplug the guitar when not in use.

[lightningbolt]

I am an electronics novice....so I can't say why but when the battery was dead the guitar was totally dead with zero output.

[TRG]

Cool - thanks for the replies guys. I haven't had one die on me yet, but probably because I change them out before they have a chance to die. Wish I had a built in meter/indicator on the back that I could look at to see the juice level!

[keirweir]

Total thread hijack...

I had a battery go out on me mid way through a set. It happened to coincide with a new rig gig. It really sounded alot like the tubes went at first and then it went pretty silent. It was hard to tell if it was 100% quiet with a band playing on top of me. I was borderline devistated as i was sure the amp went. Thankfuly I was wrong...

Lesson learned... I change my battery every 3 gigs or so.

[midnightrainband]

I've got a couple of cell phone pics of the new Phiga Wolf I've got but I cannot figure out how to post them. They are .bmp's. Any idea on how to paste them into a post? Thanks.

[TI4-1009]

You can't paste them in. You have to upload them to someplace on the web (photobucket, flickr, etc.), click the "Img" button while you're composing a reply here, and copy and paste the url for the photo between the [img] bookends.

[mgbills]

Lightningbolt
At least in the Tiger wiring configuration (and I believe with the others as well) all output goes through the buffer. The buffer is turned on by putting a jack in the main output jack. You can play the guitar through any rig, but you need a good battery in the guitar. If you don't unplug the main output jack when you're done playing, the battery dies in a couple of days. If you unplug it...it last a long freakin' time. I check mine with a meter if I'm going to play out...if I remember. Otherwise I keep a couple of industrial 9v batts in the case.

Peace
M

[lightningbolt]

At least in the Tiger wiring configuration (and I believe with the others as well) all output goes through the buffer. The buffer is turned on by putting a jack in the main output jack. You can play the guitar through any rig, but you need a good battery in the guitar. If you don't unplug the main output jack when you're done playing, the battery dies in a couple of days. If you unplug it...it last a long freakin' time. I check mine with a meter if I'm going to play out...if I remember. Otherwise I keep a couple of industrial 9v batts in the case.

Appreciate the advice M.....I am aware how the jack acts as an on/off switch.

In my case the guitar is wired like Tiger but the buffer was wired incorrectly. The ground was connected to the back of one of the tone pots instead of the jack. It was always on and it took about three battery changes in three days to figure out something was amiss. Emailed Waldo and he was as helpful as his reputation says he is...

Here are some pics BTW....Phil does great inlay.

[TI4-1009]

Well, I'm surprised. I think Phil made about 30 Tigers and Wolfs (Wolves?) this run, and only three or four are spoken for on this board, I would have expected quite a few more. That means there are a lot of serious Dead guitarists out there that don't tune in here.

[paulinnc]

I love the Bertha inlay, very nice.

[Mosfed]

The Bad : The finish is a bit rough in a couple of places and the color is more yellow than I would like, the 5-way and mini switches need to be redone but these are not a big deal for me and overall I am extremely happy with my purchase...

The color may actually be my fault.... I ordered a Wolf from Phil a while back and I asked him to try and replicate the color that Garcia's Wolf aged to - that lovely deeeeeep orange. And so he did. When he sent me the whole batch of unfinished guitar Picts in January I was surprised to see that the whole run had been done in a deeper color. I picked the most orange of the bunch. There were a few that were very olive colored but still pretty cool.

I love it. I am very happy with and have had no problems. My communication with Phil was damn near perfect and I got everything I was looking for. The neck and jumbo frets really make it basically idiot proof to play.

My only beefs are that Garcias wolf wasn't offset at all, and Phil's are slightly. Also the Wolf inlay is a bit large. I have ordered a cocobolo Bolt from Phil - hippy sandwich cocobolo-maple-cocobolo-maple core- cocobolo-maple-cocobolo. Can't wait.

[Mosfed]

I was sucking the life out of 9 volts every 3 hours. With Waldo's help I corrected the wiring issue. Otherwise everything else was first class.

OT - How do you know when the 9-volt is dying/dead? I mean is it obvious sound wise?

When my battery died, I got 0 sound out of the guitar.

My midi is wired like the second - no buttons - a toggle switch and the second tone is a midi volume. Can't say I am totally sold on the midi though. It's really tough to get tones at the quality that the boys managed