can pickups stop working?

[The Crusader]

hi. just sold a set of bill lawrence p46 P bass pickups to a fellow TBer. he installed them but says he has no output. is it possible that they stopped working? I don't see how as the basic premise of a pickup is pretty simple, but.........
the last time i used them was about 5 years ago, but still.......
thanks for any input to help us.

[gary mitchell]

They are wrap with wire almost as thin as your hair. could have broke it somewhere. I was cleaning my bass one time, and some of the cleaner drip out of the bottle. It went into the pickup and shorted it out, I had to replace it on my Pbass.

[M.R. Ogle]

Highly unlikely. On a P=bass type pickup, both coils would have to have broken windings for a "no output" situation to occur if hooked up properly.

I'd bet he just has them hooked up incorrectly.

[The Crusader]

Can he test it with a mulitimeter?

[Nev375]

Had s DiMarzio model P where a magnet on the D G pickup came unglued and snapped over to it's counterpart pickup across the polepieces.

This happened sometime before my first session in a recording studio. We ended up having to redub my bass parts cause there was almost no output on some of the notes.

So yeah, things can unexpectedly fail.

[dune2k]

I just had to send a new 50s Classic P-Bass because it was DOA. After some fiddling everything worked fine for like half a day and went dead again. I checked everything with a DMM (multimeter) and the PU didn't seem to put out much signal (just some badly distorted stuff on the G-string).
So yeah, they can go bad.

[maches]

Originally Posted by M.R. Ogle

Highly unlikely. On a P=bass type pickup, both coils would have to have broken windings for a "no output" situation to occur if hooked up properly.

I'd bet he just has them hooked up incorrectly.

I had a 62' P-bass go dead on me a few weeks after I bought it. When I opened it up a single wire had come loose from one of the bobbins. One coil tested fine with my DMM while the other was open. The pickup didn't work at all.

Ask the guy you sold the pickup to if he has a multimeter and if so to test the pickup's continuity.

[Jazz Ad]

Originally Posted by M.R. Ogle

Highly unlikely. On a P=bass type pickup, both coils would have to have broken windings for a "no output" situation to occur if hooked up properly.

I'd bet he just has them hooked up incorrectly.

THe coils of a P pickup are wired series so if one of them doesn't work, the whole pickup shows 0.

[M.R. Ogle]

DOH!!!... that's correct. It would just take ONE coil broken to short the whole process out.

Yep, get a multimeter on each half.

[M.R. Ogle]

As I recall... Do those Lawrence pickups have the black, white and red wires? I had a "blade" set of Bill Lawrences and remember there being something un-conventional about their install/setup.

[iiipopes]

Yes, coils can short out for any number of reasons: physical damage, chemical damage, internal corrosion, breakdown over time of the insulation (especially with formvar, although that takes a few decades), improper lead attachment, solder flux not completely evaporating away, etc. Without a direct diagnosis, there is no way to tell otherwise.

[johnboy65]

Originally Posted by The Crusader

Can he test it with a mulitimeter?

Yes one with an ohm setting

[johnboy65]

Oh and no I've never seen a pickup sit and go bad. However if the leads were heated for WAY too long during removal it could have messed something up, but that would take some serious talent.

[davidAaronCarte]

I'm the guy who bought the pickup
Rewired the harness from scratch with different pots this afternoon and its working fine
One must have been damaged, wired it up the same both times
Not my first pickup rodeo, though it is the first time with a P setup

[The Crusader]

Thanks foe all the help everyone.