Pickup Gone Bad

[Dmoney]

Yo...

so... how do you fault find a pickup?
played a guitar with a 4 conductor wire pup. a '59.
The same guitar had a JB bridge. the bridge pup was slightly closer to the strings then the neck. However the neck pup was much lower output. noticeable loss of distortion out of the amp when switching to it. It uses the same vol and tone as the neck, so I guess the issue must be with either the neck pup connection to the switch, the connection of the wire to the pup, or the pup itself.

does it sound like something anyone else has experienced? is it normal for that difference between a JB + 59?
didn't sound right to me, I just wanted to know how to fault find and fix this... or if its a question of getting a new pup.

cheers

[ras]

They are different output but not terribly different.  You shouldn't have a channel switching effect go on where you go from full on lead to clean just by switching the pickups.  Tube amps have natural compression on dirty settings try switching pups on the clean channel if you notice that you lose most of your signal it is time to get the soldering iron out and try every joint that the 59 is hooked up to.  It could just be a dead or bad joint really.

[Dmoney]

thanks for the tip. there was a loss of level on dirty for sure. i was playing through an unfamiliar blackstar ht-5 head. i did use the clean channel but i don't remember if i noticed the loss their. i'll have to try it again. ta