It’s the same story over and over again. Person gets new guitar, plays it for a week and then the jack socket starts to work itself loose.

It’s happened on every guitar I’ve had, and just about every one else’s I know too. You tighten it up and it works loose again. Then later on, the guitar stops working altogether – bummer.

What happens – After repeatedly tightening the outside nut up, the wire inside becomes twisted and under stress, so eventually one of the wires attached to the socket comes off and you’re left with a dead guitar. As many guitarists don’t have much electronics knowledge, (they just wanna play, man!) they don’t know what to do, but it’s really simple to fix, and it’s really simple to prevent.

First off. When you get a new guitar, take the jack plate off. There will be a nut on either side keeping the socket fixed, but as there’s no locking mechanism on the nuts, they soon work loose. To stop this, a dab of superglue, varnish, threadlock or something else suitable on the edge of the inside nut will stop it moving. You can do this on the external nut as well if you like, although most people prefer to leave the exterior alone without the ugly blob showing.

Next, if you find you’re already having problems and the guitar is completely dead, it’s almost certainly one of the wires has come loose as described above.

I recently borrowed the lovely epiphone flying vee in the picture, and was told there was an unknown electrical problem, and could I do anything with it? As non of the knobs or switches did anything and there was no sound at all, my first thought was the input wire, and lo and behold, upon taking off the jack plate, the earth had come off.

http://www.electric-guitar-blog.com/the-jack-socket/

I cut the socket off and stripped back the wire again. Careful if you do this, as there’s never much spare here, then re-soldered the wires back on again. Voila! Working guitar.