Battery Draining on Unplugged Bass

(Edit: Fixed my own problem. I had indeed mixed up the battery and ground wires on the jack plug.)

Took my Ibanez SR370F off the wall last night. (Haven’t played it for a couple months since getting another fretless I like better. Planning to sell the Ibanez.)

Battery was dead despite the bass being kept unplugged.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got some sort of drain in the circuit. Any thoughts on where to look or what to check?

I had changed out the barrel jack which wasn’t maintaining a good connection. Wondering if maybe I wired it up wrong when I did that? Or this could have been a problem from before that?

It wouldn’t work if I swapped the tip and battery leads, but I might have accidentally swapped battery and ground on the plug? Would that cause this problem?

Will get some photos up later.

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Just to be sure - you replaced it with another stereo jack, yeah?

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Correct. Another stereo jack.

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Solved my own problem.

I had indeed mixed up the ground and the battery wires on the jack. They are both black and the same gauge. Had to follow the battery wire back.

Everything worked fine when plugged in, because when the plug is inserted, those two are connected. But battery ran down when unplugged, because the battery wire was connected to the outside shell of the jack plug, which contacted the conductive grounding that lines the cavity. So the battery remained connected to the preamp circuit.

Switched the wires. Checked with voltmeter, and saw no voltage drop (which I had before). Tested, and it played fine.

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