can an electric guitar pickup "fail"?

C

chris

Owner's Manual Reader
my infamously problematic Majesty guitar just gave me something i personally have never experienced: my electric bridge position pickup just stopped working completely.

the pickups are completely passive, but the guitar has an active preamp and needs batteries. fresh batteries are in and the Neck and Piezo pickups work perfectly. all switches and volume etc knobs are working correctly. the pickup cavity with 1million wires seems to have no broken connections or anything wrong, though i HOPE it's somewhere in here and i can just solder it back on.

again, zero signal whatsoever from the bridge pickup - tapping it, playing the strings, etc. nothing. however when i touch/grab both sides of the pickup near the mounting screws, i get a ground hum and a SLIGHT bit of strings signal comes through. the pickups are direct mounted to the body, like all JP guitars.

any thoughts? i've been playing this guitar 2-3 times a week for maybe 4-5 months now. can a pickup just die?

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thanks for any suggestions.
 
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I know that passive pickups need to be serviced every once in a while, or they will die, or at the least loose their luster. I don't know if the same applies to active pickups, but considering it's only been 4 or 5 months, I doubt that's the issue here. If there aren't any soldering issues, I'd say contact the manufacture, though.
 
thanks for the reply. i misspoke a bit and i'll fix the OP.

the pickups themselves are passive. there is an active preamp though which needs batteries all the time. those are fresh.

speaking of the preamp, i just engaged maybe a 10 dB boost option, and there is the FAINTEST signal coming from the bridge pickup, so it's just really really weak, leading me to think it's a connection issue...? gah this guitar really fkn hates me.
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
thanks for the reply. i misspoke a bit and i'll fix the OP.

the pickups themselves are passive. there is an active preamp though which needs batteries all the time. those are fresh.

speaking of the preamp, i just engaged maybe a 10 dB boost option, and there is the FAINTEST signal coming from the bridge pickup, so it's just really really weak, leading me to think it's a connection issue...? gah this guitar really fkn hates me.
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I recieved My Majesty 1 1/2 months ago 7 string btw, and I had to send it in for repairs 2 days later. Wouldn't stay in tune, had fret problems and several other small issues.

I have heard of the Majesty preamp's failing like you are talking about on their ErnieBall forum. Contact Customer SErvice @ ernie ball as you're still under warranty. WOuld be nice if you do figure out what it is to let us know haha:)
 
Ive had my Polar Noir Majesty 6 string (which i LOVE) for about 7 months with no problems. I guess I just lucked out ; )
 
Yes pickups can die, usually it is the winding wire that is culprit, would require rewinding. Not worth the effort just replace.
 
luke said:
Not worth the effort just replace.
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I guess that depends on the pickup. It would be cheaper for some pickups to have them rewound, and others replaced. Plus, in my case, I seem to have an emotional attachment to my SD JB, and Jazz pups. I have re-installed them in 3 different guitars, because I like them so much, and if they died, I'd get them rewound in heartbeat.
 
laughyouraxeoff said:
I recieved My Majesty 1 1/2 months ago 7 string btw, and I had to send it in for repairs 2 days later. Wouldn't stay in tune, had fret problems and several other small issues.
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i experienced the same with mine. unfortunately i got mine used due to a killer price. original owner definitely didn't do anything to f up this guitar. oh well that's the gamble you take with used and i'm not complaining about that.

hmm preamp failing? i'll look at the EB forums again but i never noticed that as i peruse that forum at least once weekly.

again, neck pickup works completely fine. it's just the bridge.

thanks for the replies guys.
 
You say all the switches work correctly, but are you sure?

I have a guitar with a built in preamp/piezo bridge (not an Ernie Ball, but similar setup) and the bridge pickup started to get really faint, almost like an out of phase sound or playing through a wah pedal. Tone out of the piezo unit and neck pickup was totally unaffected.

Assuming that the preamp was the most likely thing to fail, I bought a replacement preamp and brought it to a guy who does great guitar work (same shop that builds Komet amps). I had him put in the new preamp electronics, but it turns out the problem was my toggle switch.
 
I'll preface this by saying that I am no expert. Not even close.

I have had some pickups go bad on me. Some things I would do to troubleshoot. Wire the offending pickup straight to the output jack and bypass everything. Then see if you get a signal. Also, you can put a meter on the pickup and see if it registers anything. You should be able to find out online what the pickup should measure at, or maybe you already know. I had a Super Distortion in a Dean go dead on me. The neck pickup measured at 13.60 Kohm, but the bridge wouldn't even registered. I was told that rewinding the pickup was the only way to bring it back to life.
 
I mean I didn't test it with a meter or whatever, but all other positions work on all other switches etc. I suppose it could be the 3 way switch for the bridge position.

I'm not ruling anything out. :) thanks for the idea!

Gotta go to a rehearsal with my back up guitar in less than an hour now. Troubleshoot time must be later. Meh. Fkn guitar. It hates me. Honestly.
 
it CAN happen
but i'd say it's more likely a switch issue than a pickup issue

a bad joint on the circuit board is probably the issue- or in a switch.

Ibanez guitars have 5 way selector switches with a tiny circuitboard built in- many have gone out on me- but it takes a lot for a pickup to die- it's extremely uncommon in my experience
 
Chris@AxeFxTutorials said:
i experienced the same with mine. unfortunately i got mine used due to a killer price. original owner definitely didn't do anything to f up this guitar. oh well that's the gamble you take with used and i'm not complaining about that.

hmm preamp failing? i'll look at the EB forums again but i never noticed that as i peruse that forum at least once weekly.

again, neck pickup works completely fine. it's just the bridge.

thanks for the replies guys.
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Well in your case I am thinking it could be the switch, the pickup or the board that the pickup goes in to before it get's to the output jack. I sadly don't have mine here now "won't be here till Friday from repairs". You could try asking the customer services guys at Ernie, they have a contact email and from my experience they will get back to you with some idea's with in 24 hours, sometimes minutes but yeah.
 
In the 30+ years I've played and toured professionally, I've never had a pickup actually die. However, I know it's possible. Windings are pretty fine wire, and can be broken. When I have electronic trouble with any of my guitars, it ends up being the output jack, switch, or pot (in that order of likelihood). My guitars are simple in terms of wiring, and I can field-test my guitars with a multi-meter for backstage troubleshooting / solder touchups.

The wiring inside your Majesty looks pretty complex. No wonder those guitars are such versatile machines! I've only played a few of them, but I was amazed at the huge range of tones it could produce. I'd guess a solder connection or bad switch contact (either in the switch, or in the pots) as a starting point. I'd recommend having it diagnosed by someone familiar with that guitar line. I'm sure any competent electronic repairman could also do it, but it often helps to have someone who already knows the expected behavior of that wiring package. My amp tech (who works on my tube amps) is an expert in the Fender AB763 (Twin) circuit, and he's the only person I trust to troubleshoot my Boogie Lonestar, which is basically an optimized version of the Twin. Even so, he had to get on the phone with a Boogie amp tech to discuss the expected interaction values within the tone stack.

You could test the "is it dead" functionality of the pickup itself with a multimeter by verifying the pickup itself is producing an output current when you pluck the strings. I bet the expected output value is posted somewhere on the EB forums.

Best of luck with this. Let us know what you find.
 
Id be willing to bet a Dunkin Donut that the issue is with your wiring. You have a ton of wires, circuit boards, and solder joints crammed in to a conductive cavity. If it were me I'd start poking around in there with a chop stick to see if I could identify a loose connection. Short of that a trip to someone good with schematics and soldering irons is in order.
 
Pickups absolutely can die Chris. It's usually from years of abuse, sweating all over it, cold and hot changes and probably some degree of shoddy craftsmanship. I don't think that any of those apply here. I'd go with what everyone else is saying about a bad solder joint first.

Now if you've got a multimeter you can probably check the pickup fairly easily (well not with all of those wires); if it's bad it's probably going to read either 0 or INF. Anything between 8-20kΩ is probably going to mean it's not the pickup.
 
2 of my original Strat pups (2000 American Standard) died on me. No signal. At the time, I wasn't very electrically proficient, so i just replaced all the pups and had a guitar guy do it for me.
 
For the record I had a SD Cool Rail die on me within a week of installation, I have to warranty replace it still. One coil died, if I spikt it the other works, but together zilch.
 
thanks for the replies so far everyone.

i got home from rehearsal and tested things on the bad guitar a bit more. all connections and wiring looks solid as far as i can tell. no loose wires.

the bridge pickup actually does make sound but i'd say it's like 1% of what it used to make before. if i put a high gain amp, you can hear a very quiet clean sound. it reacts to the pickup selector, it coil taps in the middle position when set that way, the tone knob affects it and the volume knob affects it. it's just that it's at 1% output and is VERY very quiet.

since all the other knobs and switches seem to be working like normal, could this put the blame for sure on the pickup itself? and not the 3-way bridge/neck PU selector switch?

ugh this is making me sick. just started a new project and my main guitar goes down day of. fkn seriously.
 
Yes, everything can fail. The coil wire broke on my Suhr neck pickup. (The wire isn't attached to the pickup bottom plate with small grommets like on all other brands.)
 
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