What's it mean if a pup won't give output, but can hear it.....

[FortyEight]

So I have a strat style guitar (Starcaster by Fender). I pulled the neck pup out by just snipping the wires. And then moved the middle pup to the neck position. I like it this way.

BUT, I've been delving into if I want to upgrade pups or not. I swapped out the pickguard for giggles. I like the inbetween sound on this set up quite a bit. But I might put a humbucker in the bridge and get a decent alnico pup for the neck.

So today I was measuring the pups, just to see. The bridge measures 6.24. But when I switch it to the neck pup (which is technically the middle, wiring wise), it won't give me anything. When I switch it to inbetween it's 5.82.

It's weird, I've used the neck quite a bit recording and stuff. But I think pulling the neck pup may have done something maybe not quite right to the wiring. Could be affecting the sound possibly? I'm not sure it sounds any different though. The neck position is not my favorite sound and I don't use it a lot.

I kinda want to try just one pup in the middle, but it would have to sound decent kind of low. The pups I have now, even though they are ceramic bar magnet, don't sound good low. I had a Squier that had pups that did though at one point.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[rigatele]

Very possible. But there's not much I can see from the outside of the guitar. If the question is, "is it possible to make a wiring error?", then yeah, sure it is. Or a bad solder joint... or a ground/hot swap... or a number of other things. It's pure speculation without knowing exactly how things ended up in there.

By the way, Strats usually have identical, or nearly identical pickups in all three positions.

 

[Rob DiStefano]

Are you metering the pickups IN or out of the circuit?

 

[FortyEight]

@Rob DiStefano What does that mean exactly? in or out of the circuit? i have the switch switched to the pup that im measuring.

 

[mexicanyella]

One pickup in the middle position...DOOOOOO IT:



That’s a long video and I haven’t watched it all yet, but there are some pretty interesting playing sections around 5:15, 9:20 and 15:20.

That guy gets some pretty cool tonal range with only a middle pickup and various slightly rolled off volume and tone knob positions. Just by ear, I don’t think I’d be thinking “strat” if i heard that. It’s kind of its own thing.

 

[Rob DiStefano]

@Rob DiStefano What does that mean exactly? in or out of the circuit? i have the switch switched to the pup that im measuring.

Unsolder the pickup from the circuit, then meter it.

Also, check the magnets to see if indeed they are magnetized.

 

[AAT65]

So today I was measuring the pups, just to see. The bridge measures 6.24. But when I switch it to the neck pup (which is technically the middle, wiring wise), it won't give me anything. When I switch it to inbetween it's 5.82.

So I'm guessing that you are measuring DC resistance (on the guitar lead).
Since the resistance of B+N in parallel is lower than Bridge by itself then the Neck pickup isn't an open circuit: but it doesn't go down much so its resistance is pretty high. Throwing some quick numbers in a calculator I'd say the neck pickup DC resistance is over 80kOhms.
Most likely that means a bad (high-resistance) solder joint.

 

[FortyEight]

I thought I found wiring schematics for 2 single coil 2 volume blender but I can't seem to find it in my saved files. LOL. Ugh. I do have the single pup single volume one though. And it would be a good place to start.

I did watch part of that video. I forget if someone else posted it or I just stumbled on it. He's got two fender amps he's playing into. LOL. 2 tube amps.

Oh snap, I wasn't even gonna do a tone knob. But maybe I should....

Interesting, seymour duncan shows if you do a volume and a tone, the volume is a 500k pot. Waaaaaaa?