okay, so I've been working on this thing for a while, I got good tubes in it and it played really well other than some of the more obvious action problems which I'm slowly working on. I replaced the speaker wire with some high-end oxygen free cable, and I was going to replace the piano harp pickup cable's old and cracked RCA connector with a hi-fi cast chrome jack.
The problem is, now that I've switched it out, all I was getting was this hugely loud and obnoxious static and electrical noise, no notes. Upon further investigation, I found that one or two of the notes did indeed play, but incredibly loudly and distorted. Looking closer at the pickup, I could see sparks jumping between the tine and the top of the pickup (non-ground). Later on, I turned it back on to demonstrate to one of my friends what was happening, and it did nothing. I tested the cable and it was fine. I tested the harp, and there was continuity between the connectors, meaning that there's a short somewhere. However, I'm not sure how this happened, or whether that short was the cause of the noise, as now that I detect the short, I get no sound except for when I disconnect the wire from the amplifier (which makes the kind of sound you'd expect for disconnecting a wire from an amp.)
yea, anyway, I'm just looking for ideas.
