Bartolini pickups will never break. They are cast and sealed in epoxy so even water won't destroy them.
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Can A Pickup Just Break?
- Thread starter theevilplankton
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I played upright 9-10 years old so not counting them 
That's the ticket. No straplocks. no backup bass, one pickup, with active preamp but no spare batteries and no spare strings. If anything goes wrong, just crawl into the back seat of your car and go to sleep. No worries. I've actually seen this happen.
Pickups are wound with VERY fine wire. It can just take normal handling and the vibrations in the instrument or even just damp air to create corrosion to get a weak spot in the coil to snap or for the insulation on the wire to flake off and then it shorts the pickup out (making output low). These are common fails.
You forgot spontaneous combustion or being ripped apart by random black holes that appear!
My point wasn't that things can't happen, but that it's not the same as a battery going out on tour, breaking a string, or an instrument cable going out on you. If you've had bad luck, sorry to hear that, all I can comment on is my experience which is what I did.
I thought spontaneous combustion was more a drummer thing than a bass player problem. And as for random black holes I don't think anyone needs to worry so long as CERN is now down for repairs.
But my point was that a pickup failure is indeed "the same" as a battery, string or cable going out. Or any other part going out. Bad luck can happen. I have had pickups fail, but not at a gig. Lots of times things will die when you are just practicing etc. But that doesn't mean that they will not fail at a gig. At gigs I've had pots disintegrate, cables chomped by falling cymbals, straps just rip apart and strings break. Everybody knows "stuff happens". The key is what are you prepared to do about it. Years ago I learned the hard way that driving home to grab another bass is NOT the answer. And though pickups can and do fail, I don't think carrying an extra pickup to solder in is any answer either.
I thought spontaneous combustion was more a drummer thing than a bass player problem. And as for random black holes I don't think anyone needs to worry so long as CERN is now down for repairs.
But my point was that a pickup failure is indeed "the same" as a battery, string or cable going out. Or any other part going out. Bad luck can happen. I have had pickups fail, but not at a gig. Lots of times things will die when you are just practicing etc. But that doesn't mean that they will not fail at a gig. At gigs I've had pots disintegrate, cables chomped by falling cymbals, straps just rip apart and strings break. Everybody knows "stuff happens". The key is what are you prepared to do about it. Years ago I learned the hard way that driving home to grab another bass is NOT the answer.
Copper doesn't weaken and disintegrate because of oxidation. That's why it's used in building construction and boats.
It can be affected by acids, but the acid would need to eat through the insulation of the coil wire, first. I don't see that happening just from being touched/handled.
Metal fatigue/stress could cause coil wire to break over time. But it seems to me that would only be a problem with hand wound pickups. Machines would be set up to prevent such stresses.
Unless the coil is loosely scatter wound, I don't think vibrations would damage it. Individual windings of a tightly/neatly wound coil wouldn't vibrate independently against each other. And if they did, the insulation would rub off long before the wire broke, causing a short and weakening the output.
If pickup coils are so fragile, how is it that transformer and inductor windings can last 50+ years?
I was a working musician for about 50 years and a guitar tech for several of them. In that time I saw a total of one pickup that needed rewinding. It was in an old Electar lap steel and the coil was wrapped directly on the magnet. I think the galvanic reaction of the dissimilar metals ate the coil wire.
I wish I could have charged for a rewind every time someone brought me an instrument with a "dead" pickup that only needed a wire reattached or a switch replaced.
It can be affected by acids, but the acid would need to eat through the insulation of the coil wire, first. I don't see that happening just from being touched/handled.
Metal fatigue/stress could cause coil wire to break over time. But it seems to me that would only be a problem with hand wound pickups. Machines would be set up to prevent such stresses.
Unless the coil is loosely scatter wound, I don't think vibrations would damage it. Individual windings of a tightly/neatly wound coil wouldn't vibrate independently against each other. And if they did, the insulation would rub off long before the wire broke, causing a short and weakening the output.
If pickup coils are so fragile, how is it that transformer and inductor windings can last 50+ years?
I was a working musician for about 50 years and a guitar tech for several of them. In that time I saw a total of one pickup that needed rewinding. It was in an old Electar lap steel and the coil was wrapped directly on the magnet. I think the galvanic reaction of the dissimilar metals ate the coil wire.
I wish I could have charged for a rewind every time someone brought me an instrument with a "dead" pickup that only needed a wire reattached or a switch replaced.
Hopkins
Commercial User
This,
Most of the pickups I have ever seen that have "failed" were obviously mishandled by someone prior to bringing me the instrument. The only exception being a T40 pickup, in which the coil didn't break but one of the pickup leads where it entered the epoxy potting.
