can an electric guitar pickup "fail"?

Do you know someone with a digital multimeter that has a testing mode? Or just buy one; those are dirt-cheap nowadays and it's always good to have one to check loose connections. Just connect the needles with the soldering joints of the pickup and the preamp board. If there's a current, it's the pickup (or preamp). If not, it's the wire.

If you want to find out if its the preamp or the pickup, then you can remove the battery temporarily to disable the preamp and short the pickup and the output jack. If you see a significant current on the output jack (you can short the working pickup for a comparison how much current you should get) when picking a string, it's the preamp.
 
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I think a friend has one nearby, just remembered. I used to have one but it was stolen when my house was robbed awhile ago.
 
Just edited my post with a method to find out if it's the preamp or pickup when you ruled out the possibility of the wire being faulty.
 
Hummm... I witnessed another Majesty go down for no apparent reason just last weekend
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the warranty is non-transferrable so i'm SOL as far as EB service, which i knew when i bought the guitar. but high end gear like EB really shouldn't have basic problems like high frets, bad pickups, won't stay in tune, etc. i know FAS has a similar policy. but i just don't get what the 2nd owner could do to the gear that the 1st with warranty couldn't... especially for basic issues. did i go in there and lift a fret myself to make it too high?

probably just pressure on the consumer to buy new from the factory, rather than moving gear sideways among end users. but come on. when lemons happen, they should help out man... i just want a NEW and different majesty guitar at this point. bleh. i feel fkn terrible the more i think about it.
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
i just want a NEW and different majesty guitar at this point. bleh. i feel fkn terrible the more i think about it.
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Is there a "legendary" local guitar repairman in your area? In the Seattle area, it's Mike Lull, who has a shop over in Bellevue. He's the luthier to the stars, and I only entrust my guitars to him. He's a bit more expensive (but not much more) than the cheaper guitar repair guys, but he's a craftsman without equal in this area. I've had my main guitar for over 20 years and it has a lot of miles on it. A few years ago it was ready for some pro shop love. He refretted it with stainless steel frets (awesome, by the way), and did an end-to-end setup based on knowing how I play. That guitar was never this amazing when it was brand new, and his setup made it even more of a custom-fit to my approach. If you have a guy like that in your market, you should take your Majesty to them. You know how the guitar is supposed to function in terms of just "working right', but you also are a great player and know what would tailor the instrument to your individual technique.
 
Chris,

If you've got one of the coils working then in my opinion it is either the other coil in that pickup that is open or one of the wires on that coil came disconnected. If everything else is working it has to be one of those two IMHO. I could be wrong because there is a bazillion frickin' wires in there, but according to your tests all that stuff is working.
 
Still got the original seller's contact details? If the warranty period is still active you could maybe get them to arrange the return via wherever they bought it from.

(Given your location I'm guessing you probably didn't buy it locally tho .... which adds complications)
 
Sleestak said:
Is there a "legendary" local guitar repairman in your area? In the Seattle area, it's Mike Lull, who has a shop over in Bellevue. He's the luthier to the stars, and I only entrust my guitars to him. He's a bit more expensive (but not much more) than the cheaper guitar repair guys, but he's a craftsman without equal in this area. I've had my main guitar for over 20 years and it has a lot of miles on it. A few years ago it was ready for some pro shop love. He refretted it with stainless steel frets (awesome, by the way), and did an end-to-end setup based on knowing how I play. That guitar was never this amazing when it was brand new, and his setup made it even more of a custom-fit to my approach. If you have a guy like that in your market, you should take your Majesty to them. You know how the guitar is supposed to function in terms of just "working right', but you also are a great player and know what would tailor the instrument to your individual technique.
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A friend of mine who lives in Seattle will only take his guitars to Mike Lull, and I can Confirm from the years he's talked about Mike on how good he is. What pisses me off is I live close to Chicago, and I can't find a damn Legendary Luthier to the stars, if anyone knows of one please share, I don't mind paying extra. Just hate being in situations like Chris where we have to get the guitar perfect the first time or were basically shit out of luck, not a cool feeling. I hope you get it worked out Chris!!!!
 
Chris. Another thing to check is the contact point of all bridge PU wiring to see if "one" strand is shorting out something. After you do your initial testing with the multi-meter, (if that is what you're going to do) and if it turns out not to be the PU and you can't locate a reputable luthier, the next best thing to do, (and what I would do) is take it to a reputable amp guy or electronics repair guy. The preamp is more up the electronics ally. In my experience, not too many luthiers can troubleshoot more sophisticated electronics. They may just tell you to replace the preamp board when it can easily be fixed by an experience amp or electronics guy... quite easily at that.
 
thanks guys. i've been at a day job all day and go straight to a long gig tonight with my backup guitar. then a 4 hour gig shorty after i wake up tomorrow. so i'll have to check all of this stuff probably friday! ahhhhhhh
 
Chris everything you described sounds to me like the pickup is grounded out or shorted. You get ground plane hum because you're touching it and completing the groung path. This happens in military radios all the time, except it's usually the antenna wiring. A bad solder somewhere, most likely. Swass is on the right track.
 
Ok I got a meter and tested it but not sure I did it right.

I tried both red on tip and black on sleeve and vice versa with the instrument cable plugged into the guitar. EB spec is about 10.50 on the pickups and that's about what I got.

But when switching from neck to bridge to piezo, the reading really didn't change. So I'm not sure what I did.

I put the probes on the 3 way mag switch on both pickup selections and got consistent values and also put the probes on any 2 of the 5 wires for the bridge pickup and also got consistent values. Though I don't really know what I'm looking for, I didn't get any low values.

What's cool is that I took off the strings so I could take out the pickup. I unscrewed it (direct mounted) and there's a quick-connect sorta adapter to attach the wire to the pickup like a computer hard drive or something. So the pickup actually doesn't have any wires at all, just some small metal blades as the contacts. If all guitars did that, I'd buy a TON of pickups and try them all!

Anyway. So I don't know what this means. I tried to make a video but it's too late to do it right so sometime tomorrow.

Touching one coil of the bridge humbucker with my finger buzzes. The other doesn't.

There is one kinda bent connection for that pickup on the circuit board, a black wire, but it seems connected. Maybe I'll try zapping that one tomorrow too and see if it actually may be disconnected... But I doubt that's it.

Ugh.
 
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Chris, if you have it open right now then scan the circuit board for dry joints as well, check the pic below:
a3102322-214-dry%20solder%20joint.jpg


Dry joints tend to appear out of nowhere and stop things working just when you need them most.
 
Have you tried probing the pickup connector "blades" and the output jack? If you have no reading then, it's the pickup itself that is faulty. What is weird, though: the pickup should still work if one coil fails. So the fact that you hear the buzz only on one coil is confusing.

Have you tried shorting the pickup connector blade and the output jack to check if you get sound then (if you do this, also short the ground to the jack sleeve, for safety reasons!)?
 
Super rare that a modern humbucking pickup fails. I've never seen that before. I have seen vintage pickups fail but even that is rare and due to damage during installation / handling in the cases I have seen.

The quickest way to rule out the pickup is to rig a temp 1/4" jack directly to the pickup using alligator clips.
 
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