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Nordstrand NJ4SE: prone to failure?

mcnach

mcnach

Jun 16, 2007
8,727
9,591
Edinburgh, Scotland
#1
I have a CIJ 75RI Jazz bass with a pair of Nordstrand NJ4SE pickups... and I love them. Loud, punchy, noise-free... That's all great. Except... the neck pickup just suddenly died.

One minute I was playing a gig with it. All good. I put it back in the case... and next evening I take it out and I notice very low output from the neck pickup.

I took it out and measured the resistance, finding that one of the coils must have a break somewhere. :crying:

Like I said, I really liked the sound of these, so I have ordered a new pickup which will be with me tomorrow. But searching info on these pickups, I get the impression that there are too many failure reports. I gather that these use thinner wire than normal... maybe this is related. But it seems like a real shame if the pickups are not robust enough... and believe me, I don't mistreat my basses.

Anybody else have failure experiences with these pickups?
Am I right thinking that these, nice sounding as they are, fail more often than others? Or is it just my wrong impression because maybe I've focused too much on them in my searches?

Not sure what to do with the broken one... maybe get it rewound somewhere. Any suggestions? I'm in the UK, I presume sending it to Nordstrand would not be cost effective for me, unfortunately.
 
#3
Well that's no good. If it just up and died that'd be a warranty issue, feel free to contact the shop and we'll get a replacement sent your way.

[email protected]

For what it's worth, I have not noticed that the NJ4SE fail more frequently than our other pickups. Sorry yours did!
 
#4
nad said:
Well that's no good. If it just up and died that'd be a warranty issue, feel free to contact the shop and we'll get a replacement sent your way.

[email protected]

For what it's worth, I have not noticed that the NJ4SE fail more frequently than our other pickups. Sorry yours did!
Click to expand...


wow, that was not a response I expected! :)

Yes, the pickup simply ceased to work. One evening it was working alright, I played a gig with this bass and it was working just fine. I packed it as usual afterwards, and the next evening I went to use it and... the neck pickup barely produced any sound.
I opened the bass and disconnected the pickup and I could not measure continuity between the white and black wires. Then I removed the cover to test each coil separately, and one of the coils was ok, but the other was dead. I could not see a loose wire anywhere.
I'll get in touch at the email address above, thank you!
I do not have any receipts or anything, so I did not think I could get it replaced. But if I could, I'd certainly appreciate that, as I really like the sound but are not exactly cheap.
I also feel reassured if you say you haven't noticed any premature failure issue with these pickups.

Thanks for posting!
 
#8
Kael said:
Been using a set of nj4se's in my main bass for years without a hiccup. I haven't seen massive reports of them being faulty either. Not sure where you gleaned that.
Click to expand...

I had never before had a pickup dying on me, so after this happened, I was curious and did a search for experiences of pickups dying and probably included the NJ4SE model in the search, which may have given me a biased impression.
The wire in these pickups is thinner, so I guess in my head I was finding reasons for a "more pronounced fragility" of these pickups. But it looks like it's just an erroneous impression on my part.

I love the sound of these pickups. Your testimonials and the general love I perceive for the company make me feel quite reassured :)

I just emailed Nordstrand. Let's see what happens.
I'm pretty amazed that someone connected with the comany replied to this thread, and did it so quickly and so positively. I cannot imagine anything like that with any other company, to be honest... I'm extremely pleasantly surprised.
 

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