Replacing Battery in older model Preamp .

[Oldstrommer]

I bought a Seagull Maritime 12-String guitar in 2009. It came with a Baggs pre-amp installed.

I wish I could post pictures here to show you the model (?) I have in my guitar.

It hasn't been played (let alone been plugged it into an amp) for 3 years. Now the battery is dead.

I removed the four screw that hold the pre-amp to the body inside. It's basically a small sandwiched circuit-board
with the 9-volt battery enclosure encapsulated in a semi-transparent compartment projecting perpendicularly off the PCB into the guitar interior. I have examined all sides of the pre-amp (using a magnifier) and can find no obvious access to the battery compartment.

Rather than go at it with muscle and risk permanently damaging the enclosure, I decided to check with the forum here to see if anyone knows how to replace the battery in this (legacy) pre-amp. I found brick8's thread from 06-02-2014 but the responder's comments were still not clear enough to me.

Can anybody help me out here?

[Oldstrommer]

Mystery Solved!

Hey ... guess what? I found out how to get the battery compartment to open up ... accidentally. While futzing about with the loose pre-amp inside the hollow space of the guitar ... it just popped up out of its socket!!!

It's kind of an ingenious system. Push down on the top plate where the little adjustment knobs poke through and it will pop up. Then, remove the "cartridge" holding the battery ... remove and replace the battery. Make sure the new battery is inserted the correct way with the 9-volt contacts in the negative and positive positions (indicated on the inside of the "cartridge").

So I just had to push it in ... pop it up and out ... in and out ... in and out (whoa there buddy!) ... and then it failed to engage the catch at the bottom. It wouldn't stay in. Now what?!?!

It has a rather flimsy little aluminum (?) swivel thing near the bottom on the outside of the battery compartment which gets moved to a certain position when the cartridge is inserted and pushed to the bottom. If this swivel thing doesn't catch the little "knob" that projects out from the bottom of the cartridge then the springs will just push it back out.

So, I worked on improving the alignment of this metal swivel thing for quite some time. It was difficult to deal with such a tiny piece of angular metal (less than 0.75" by 0.50") using my fat fingers inside the hollow compartment (since I didn't want to disconnect the wires). Thankfully, I have some small tools suitable for the re-alignment of the swivel-catch and I was able to get the battery cartridge to catch and hold. This time I didn't play with it too much.

I don't plan on messing with this push-plate system again ... at least not until the next time the battery needs replacing.

Sorry about the long winded explanation. Hopefully, someone else with the same problem in the future will find this report and benefit from my experience.

[Caleb_Elling]

Thanks for your insight, Oldstrommer!

I'm sure this will be helpful to others in the future.