Tele pickup problem

BabyFrankReborn

Picked up my Tele for the first time in a month or so, to discover no sound from the bridge pickup switch position. Middle and neck positions both fine (but only the neck pickup sounding). I opened it up today, hoping for a loose wire, but nothing obvious, all wires in place. Reflowed the solder on the hot and ground of the bridge pickup, but still nothing. Also used contact cleaner on the switch to no avail. 

Eventually disconnected the bridge pickup (Bareknuckle Flat 52)  completely and measured the impedance, it’s reading 3 Mega ohms (not in the Kohm range as I’d expected). So… sounds to me like a pickup problem, right?  Any idea what fault a high impedance might indicate? I’d been expecting a faulty pickup to be either open circuit or shorted out.

All advice welcome 

ICBM

That's an open circuit.

The good news is that if there's no sound at all, the break may be at the hot (usually outer) end of the coil, in which case it may be possible to fix it by unwinding until you reach the break and re-attaching it, without significantly altering the pickup - you won't notice a few turns less. The bad news is that you'll still need to take the string off and re-pot it afterwards - unless the break is right at the eyelet, when you can sometimes bridge it with a piece of fine wire. It's a tricky job either way, and if you're not experienced with pickup work I would probably leave it to someone who is. If it's a Bareknuckle it may be best to send it back to them.

OilCityPickups

Three megs is an unhappy pickup ... If you've tried re flowing the solder on the hookup wire eyelets with no joy ... then the issue could be internal.  

BabyFrankReborn

Thanks both. I’ll take a look at the hookup wire soldering, but past that I probably wouldn’t delve too deep.into the pickup. Maybe an excuse to pick up the Wapping Wharf I’ve had my eye on for a while

ditchboy

This happened to me too on an Elite model. I managed to get the pup fixed. 

strtdv

ditchboy said:

This happened to me too on an Elite model. I managed to get the pup fixed. 

I'd heard the neck pickups in particular on the Elites were prone to this happening