How to break a pickup

[nick.]

I was wondering, what are the easiest and most common ways someone could break or alter their pickup so it sounds bad. (I feel as if my pickup doesn't sound right. I had to take it in to get the brackets sanded to a round shape, and the guy installed them as well, but he didn't but the black on the ground, he put it somewhere else. it sounded horrible. i took it back in and told him how to fix it, now it sounds good, but could that have messed it up? Maybe i'm just being paranoid and will never get a true Nail Bomb sound with my overwound MBK2. Or maybe it's my amp tubes being old.)

[MDV]

None that I'm aware of, that can realistically happen.

Its just a length of wire and a magnet.

[Transcend]

the only way i can think of is excessive heat.

Which would expand/warp & probably break the coils

But as MDV said there are none that can realistically happen

[darkbluemurder]

I was wondering, what are the easiest and most common ways someone could break or alter their pickup so it sounds bad. (I feel as if my pickup doesn't sound right. I had to take it in to get the brackets sanded to a round shape, and the guy installed them as well, but he didn't but the black on the ground, he put it somewhere else. it sounded horrible. i took it back in and told him how to fix it, now it sounds good, but could that have messed it up? Maybe i'm just being paranoid and will never get a true Nail Bomb sound with my overwound MBK2. Or maybe it's my amp tubes being old.)

I can think of two ways to break a pickup (1) break a wire in the coil or (2) damage the magnet by excessive heat or force.

Ad (1) - in that case I would expect that the pickup does not produce a sound at all or produces a sound with only one coil. This does not seem to be the case here since you said "... it sounded horrible. i took it back in and told him how to fix it, now it sounds good"

Ad (2) - filing the mounting brackets will cause heat at the brackets. Whether this heat is enough to be transferred to the magnet I seriously doubt because the base plate will act as a heat sink. The heat problem will be more prevalent where one attempts to file down single coil magnets to alter the magnet stagger. Why did he file the brackets in the first place? If the pickup did not fit the cavity you are faced with the choice of enlarging the pickup cavity in the guitar or file the brackets or use a different pickup.

Maybe i'm just being paranoid and will never get a true Nail Bomb sound with my overwound MBK2.

What is an overwound MBK2?

Or maybe it's my amp tubes being old.)

Maybe. Did you compare the tone with another guitar? If you liked the tone with the other guitar the tubes are probably OK. Tubes get changed too often when it is not really necessary. With preamp tubes it's relatively easy to test since they are cheap and can be plugged right in - provided it is the type specified for that amp.

Cheers Stephan

[hunter]

Demagnetisation? I could imagine if you got it on a CRT monitor for longer or something...

No idea how to figure it out though.

Do the other guitars still sound right with your rig?

[Frank]

Well if it's making a sound then at least one of the coils is working. If it was wired incorrectly then maybe one coil's either shorted out or connected out of phase? Is it weak compared to other pickups in the same guitar?

Sound clips may help with a diagnosis.

[MDV]

If the wires were broken it would make almost no sound (if live or ground alone were connected) and none (if both were snapped)

And its takes a lot of force and a lot of heat (either/or) to demagnetise a magnet. If you took it out and put it in the oven for a few hours then went at it with a hammer for another few then, if it was still intact, it might have lost its magnetic field.

So unless its been very clumsily dismantled, or the magnet taken out and then abused brutally, theres no way they can happen. In the process of installation its pretty much impossible, even though there are ways to damage them, which is why I said 'realistically'. Add; extreme heat or comparatively extreme current driven through the winding; this can damage the insulation on the wind, which is actually the most vulnerable feature of the pickup, and not very vulnerable at all; I've seen it once, when a tonne of current got rammed through a guitars wiring (somehow; I just saw the aftereffects): enough to melt the cladding off the wires in the cavity and fry all the pots; it also destroyed the pickups by burning out all the insulation on the coils.

[WezV]

yeah, once the magnets are actually in the pickup it aint easy to demagnetise them.  

but i wouldnt recommend grinding tabs down because of the damage any excess heat can do to the coil wire - usually i just cut them with snips if needed... i have reshaped baseplate's before but always done it by hand to save heat build-up... wouldnt ever do it with something like a dremel and grinding wheel

dont think that is you issue though

the guy installed them as well, but he didn't but the black on the ground, he put it somewhere else. it sounded horrible. i took it back in and told him how to fix it, now it sounds good

this tells me he probably wired it wrong, you took it back so he checked again and did it proper.   not as uncommon as it should be as not all pickup makers use the same colour codes and poor techs sometimes get confused by the soldering iron fumes ;)

[1reeper]

I had a covered PK and put it in BOILING WATER to de-cover them.  Didn't do anything.  The coils weren't even soft enough to mark them with my fingernail.

[MDV]

Yeah, I've ground off the corners of a number of pickups with a dremmel. Well, not ground; cut off then rounded, with the little cutting disks. It just barely melted the residual potting on the end of the feet of the legs; it transmitted no noticable (to touch) heat to the top of them, let alone enough to damage anything. You'd do as much harm holding it in your hand for an hour.