Issue with the J pickup on my bass

[polster]

Hi all,

I have this Mustang PJ bass with a somewhat annoying issue. I'll be playing it normally when suddenly the jazz pickup goes completely silent. The first time it happened I thought it was screwed, but when I picked it up the next day it decided worked like nothing had happened. When it went quiet again, I decided to hit it with the pad of my hand like a normal person would and it came back to life. Sometimes it comes back with its full sound and other times the volume is lower than it should.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

 

[rodl2005]

To my uneducated ear, could be a loose connection.

Perhaps an almost disconnected wire and the banging on it could be connecting or unconnecting it, with "it" being one of the wires to the jazz pick up

 

[KevInDaBassment]

Cold solder joint, broken/fraying pickup leads, metal fragments in the pickup cavity...it can be a few different things.

I've seen factory jobs where a pickup lead was soldered to a pot with LITERALLY a single strand of copper remaining (as in one thread from the whole bundle). It happens, but passive electronics aren't rocket science and even an amateur hack like myself can fix something like this....any Guitar Tech should have no problem fixing it if you aren't comfortable tackling it yourself.

 

[toastw]

To my uneducated ear, could be a loose connection.

Perhaps an almost disconnected wire and the banging on it could be connecting or unconnecting it, with "it" being one of the wires to the jazz pick up

+1 to loose connection. You comfortable opening it up and examining the wires and their connections?