Don’t Be a Jackass! Take Care of Your Jack, Jack
The motha-fucking input jack. If you don’t know what that is, punch yourself in the face. No, seriously, fucking punch yourself, right in the face. Ok, maybe I’m taking this a little too seriously. I’m sure that most of you know where to find your input jack on your guitar. It’s an integral part of the guitar design after all; it is literally the final link between the guitar and electricity! Isn’t that exciting?!?
Picture this shit right here. You’re in a band. You’re out in the garage with your bandmates. Your Mom’s not home. You guys are about to write one of the greatest avant-garde garage rock songs ever to come out of Pickerington, Ohio. You plug your 1/4 inch lead into your Fender Mustang Reissue. You flip your Fender Deluxe Reverb off of standby and crank the volume. You get ready to lay into a C#Minor chord expecting greatness to engulf the room aaannnnd…nothing happens. You check your amp. You check your guitar cable. You check your guitar. You check out your drummer’s sister. Still, nothing.
“Oooooohhh yeah,” you think to yourself, out loud of course, because everyone’s looking at you. You hold your guitar out in front of you for closer examination as if it’s some kind of strange piece of spaceship shit and then proceed to explain to everyone that your input jack has come loose. It’s actually been kind of fucked up since you bought the guitar from the guy on craigslist who’s still texting you 6 months later. Hey, he wants you to hang out with him at his studio that also doubles as a mobile home. Seems legit.
You gotta man up my dude. Fix that shit. You’re 28 years old, it’s time. And it’s not that hard. Most of the time they’ve just come loose from being used. For most guitars the design is simple. You have a washer and a nut that keeps the jack nice and tight where the cable “plugs” into the guitar. Sometimes you can just hand tighten the nut and all is well. Other times it takes a little more effort.
DON’T TWIST TOO MUCH! You can really mess things up by twisting the washer and nut excessively, and you’ll end up turning the jack inside of the guitar. Remember, the input jack is wired to the internal controls and the last thing that you want to do is get all those wires tangled up. Don’t let things get that bad. Get yourself an input jack tightening tool and never look back. They don’t cost much and can save you a lot of time in the long run. Hey! Here’s one for sale!
Also, watch this totally awesome video on YouTube…It’s right here!
