The Electronic Workings of the Guitar and How to Disable the Piezo

[Junkie Joel]

Howdy,

I have a Dean Markley Icon guitar equipped with a Piezo pickup. This requires that I have a charged 9v battery in the guitar for it to work right. I want to disable the Piezo, because it sounds like crap, I never use it, and I'm sick of having to change the 9v battery just to play it.

I'm pretty handy with the soldering iron. So, all i really need to know is: What components does a normal electric guitar have? Mine has a little circuit board which i'm assume belongs soley to the piezo, but i'm not sure. Do regular electric guitars have circuit boards? (My motivation for asking this question is: If other normal electric guitars don't have circuit boards, then I could disable the piezo by simply removing the circuit board and connecting the two wires coming off it.)

Any info, whether helpful or not, will be appreciated.