dead bridge pickup

[rosett]

i've had my 52 RI tele for about 3 years, and it's been great. it's a '92, and i don't think that the original owner used it very much. about a month ago, i had the 4 way switch mod done by the local high end guitar tech. it worked fine for about 3-4 gigs, then, a week ago friday, i was playing it, and when i switched into the bridge position, it went dead. the second time i tried it, it worked fine, and continued to work fine the rest of the night. this past saturday night, i pulled it out of the case where it'd been all week, and i could only get the neck pickup in the two middle positions- the other two (outside) positions on the switch were totally dead, and i was forced to play the whole gig with just the neck pickup. i just got back from the tech's place, and it looks like the pickup is dead. this guy is meticulous, and i can't imagine that he did anything to kill it. he's going to take the pickup out and check everything, so maybe not all is lost, but i'll probably be buying another one this week.
so what happened to the pickup? i haven't spilled anything on it, and it sits in it's case when i'm not using it on the weekends. i've heard of old pickups dieing, but this one's only 13 years old. can anyone educate me on this? thanks, john

[DrewB]

I'm betting the switch is hosed.

[rosett]

it turns out the switch was fine. it was the coil wire where it's soldered to the base plate and connects to the output wire. it cost me $35 instead of howevr much a replacement pickup would have cost, plus, he set the intonation on his peterson strobe tuner.

[benbo]

Hi, I make pickups and can say that the ground wire that goes to the base plate wont affect it at all, even if you cut it off completely it would work. It sounds to me like the switch had a solder glob in it, I run into that all the time swapping out pickups as much as I do. It doesnt look like anything is there but it is, trust me on that one. I'm guessing the tech didnt want to admit he hosed the switch and blamed the plate ground. But that wont cause that problem. You also said the neck pickup only worked when in the middle position, that was definately the switch, like I said a solder glob was the cause. Now he effectively screwed up and made another 35 bucks in the process of fixing his mistake. I'd complain.