Help! Wierd pickup problem

[mr_sooty]

I have this strat with a wierd issue on the neck pickup. What I noticed first was that the neck middle position wasn't hum cancelling like it should. I have a 'reverse wound reverse polarity' middle pickup, and it's cancelling hum fine on the middle bridge combo, but the hum actually gets louder with the neck middle combo.

I checked the polarity with a magnet (actually used a spare pickup). The neck and bridge repelled while the middle attracted, so the pickups appear to be in the right positions.

Then I noticed that the tone of the neck pickup was weaker and thinner than it should be. So I got out the muti-metre.

The middle and neck pups read what they should (measuring resistance), 5 point something for the middle and 7 point something for the bridge, from memory.

The neck readings where all over the place. First time I got no reading, then I tried again and seemed to get triple what I should, about 18 ish. Then I tried again and got a normal 5 point something, now I can't get any reading. I am measuring at the points the pickups are soldered to the switch and at the grounding point, but also measuring at the soldering points of the pickups themselves, where the copper winding meets the hook-up wires. Story is the same at both points.

My results are a bit erratic, but the most common result is standard readings on the middle and bridge, no reading on the neck. I get consistant readings on the two good pups.

What's wrong with this pickup? Can it be fixed? It doesn't seem to be a wiring issue but rather a problem with the pickup itself. The wierdest thing is that the pickup actually works, and by itself it hums less than the other pickups. But as I say, the signal seems thin and slightly weaker than it should be.

Any ideas?

By the way, this is on a new guitar.

[JohnH]

not good, but it sounds the same as happened to a neck pickup that I had. Its wiring had broken somehow inside the pup. there was enough capacitive coupling between wires close together to get some thin weak sound, but not feasible (for me)to fix it. Is it a new guitar, or just new to you? can you get back to the seller?:

John

[sumgai]

sooty,

That's a new axe? How's the warranty? IOW, don't mess with it until you know the warranty is no good (or expired). Then you have options: keep it and fix it yourself, have someone else fix it, replace the pickup entirely, or just live with it. Well, that last one might not be such a hot idea.

I think you've seen similar threads here where I, and others, espouse that you use the warranty you paid for as part of the purchase price, whenever possible. But if that's just not in the cards for whatever reason, then you'll have to do one of the three things I mentioned up above.

Keep us posted


Oh, and the trouble is either a bad solder joint from the coil wire to the output wire, or the coil wire itself is broken, somewhere down the winding away from the solder joint. (It can make occasional contact, and then go away, that's possible.... Mr. Murphy says so!) Unless you like tearing your hair out by the roots, I don't recommend that you unwind a pickup just to see if you can find the break - it could be a long ways in there, real deep, and that can be upwards of ½ to ¾ of a mile's worth of dental floss drifting off your work bench and making a nice cat toy.....

HTH



sumgai

[mr_sooty]

It's covered by a warrantee, but it would cost me way more to send it back to the seller than it would to replace the pickup. And I'm pretty sure it's not "a bad solder joint from the coil wire to the output wire" because i can't get a reading on the fine copper wires that go from the coil to that solder point.

[sumgai]

sooty,

I don't know where you got it, and it makes no real difference, but if you want, you could try a little whining/bullying....

Call 'em up and say something like "I know you want me to pay for shipping this back to you, but it's bad, and it's not my fault it's bad. If your warranty means anything, then you should stand all of the costs to satisfy the warranty, not just part of them."

If that doesn't work, then you fall back on "Ya know, you guys generally have a pretty good reputation, but I'm a member of several forums on the 'Net, and most of those places have thousands of members, all of them building or fixing guitars on a daily basis. I'd sure hate to have to report to them that you sell products with a bogus warranty... wouldn't you hate to have me say that?   And furthermore, I paid X NZD for a working product, and it doesn't work as advertised. If I have to pay for shipping just to get the warranty, then my total cost for the pickup is way too high. How do you think others would react if I reported on those Forums that these things were overpriced, eh? "

And see what happens.



Of course, if time is of the essence, then you might elect to fix it yourself, or have a local repair tech do it. Just be sure to lock the cat out of the room when you do this - ask me how I know! ;D

HTH




sumgai

[mr_sooty]

Thanks man, I'll give it a go. Will let you know how it goes.