String clipping as a ground wire?

[Hopkins]

My friends tone pot quit working on his late 90s P bass special California series.
Turns out the solder joint for the ground broke. Instead of regular wire they used a piece of bass string soldered to each pot. Also the solder joints looked pretty sloppy. Could this have been a factory job or just the shoddy work of a previous owner.

[Tommorichards]

Sounds like a cheapskate owner....

[line6man]

Bass strings are more expensive than wire. There is simply no way that any factory is using strings as ground wire.

[joeyl]

I've seen bare metal wire as pot grounding before, but never a bass string.

[VincentSalizeri]

Well, I guess using the extra string clippings might be cheaper than wire if one just changed strings. That doesn't seem like much of a good idea though. Do you have any pictures of the joint?