325C58 Pickup failure

[Medicus1963]

Hi,
As i installed Glen´s faboulus loom i detected something unamusing !
Normally the neck and the middle Pickup of the Guitar are wired together, but with Glen´s loom i was able to select each pickup separate. So i found out, that the neck pickup is not working. I measured about 30MOhms of resistance where it should be about 3.7 kOhms. Does anyone of you had made the same experience or am i the only looser with a non working neck pickup.
This fact is really hard to detect and if you are a quality controller at Rickenbacker you can hear a sound in every position of the toggle switch !

Peter

[nic37]

Hi Peter!
Check the Loom solderings. Maybe the Live wire from the neck pickup is shorted to ground. Go all over it again. A bad solder maybe also. DC resistance from the C58 Toasters are in the 3 K ohms range. 30 Megohms as you pointed out is way too far. Always check DC resistance in pickups disconnected from the whole circuit for a better accurate reading.
Hope it helps. Cheers
Nicolas

[Medicus1963]

Hi Nicolas,
thanks for helping, but there is no cold soldering and I measured unsoldered of course. Looks like a broken wire inside the pickup! I think there are more failing pickups out there, but are hard to detect, because they are wired together !
But it is very hard to get those pickups in the market.

Peter

[johnhall]

Hi Nicolas,
thanks for helping, but there is no cold soldering and I measured unsoldered of course. Looks like a broken wire inside the pickup! I think there are more failing pickups out there, but are hard to detect, because they are wired together !
But it is very hard to get those pickups in the market.

Pickups fail all the time; with wire that fine both mechanical and environmental influences are working against a non-potted pickup.

It's also not very difficult to tell if a pickup is working or not, no matter whether it's paralleled for not. Just tap it gently with your keys or a screwdriver tip- anything made of steel- and a working pickup will give you a great clunk.

[Medicus1963]

Hi John,
thanks for answering ! Yes i know that this wire is very fragile, but this pickup is truly dead, 30MOhms and no sound. I actually sent it to Harry Häussel, a german luthier and Pickup Guru and I think he can fix it !
But it is a fact ,that i did not find out if this pickup is dead until i installed Glen`s loom which can select the pickups separately, because i never did the screwdriver check. In former days, when i used a tuning fork to tune, i shurely had had a better chance to find this out, holding the fork near the Pickup. But today with all these new gizmos and devices....

Peter

p.s.: It is very nice to hear from the RIC CEO in person, as i owned about a dozend Rickenbackers over the last twenty years ! Keep on rocking !!

[johnhall]

But it is a fact ,that i did not find out if this pickup is dead until i installed Glen`s loom which can select the pickups separately, because i never did the screwdriver check.

So, if you couldn't tell it wasn't working from the sound (or lack thereof) why even have the pickup or ability to select it?

Of course, my lack of enthusiasm for 3 pickup guitars is already well known.

[Medicus1963]

John,
I have another 325C58 with all three pickups working and i always wondered why this jetglo guitar sounded different, and Glen's loom is installed there too, and it really has now five really different and wonderful sounds.
By the way the guitars of course sounded different too before the loom.

regards

Peter

[Medicus1963]

Happy end!
I just installed a replacement pickup from a nice fellow in England and everything works fine again. Both guitars sound similar now, but slightly different . I think this is because of the little thicker neck on my alderglo 325 !

Peter