Tele neck pick up has lots its umph

[Faux Hog]

I've got a RI tele that has a Lace red in the bridge and a noiseless in the neck spot. The two sounded real nice, harmonious and happy. Unable geneticlly to leave well enough alone, A local tech was sought to remove the stock blade switch and tone pot and replace it with a blender with the original vol pot.
So you can visualize: Abscent blade, Vol, Blender, on the control plate.
Blender and volume work noiselessly and function normally. Both pickups work. But the output on the neck is exceptionally weak relative to the bridge, alone and/or blended.
What is going on here?
Could he have reversed the leads?
Broken the solder on the cover?
What kind of load do these blenders carry and is the abscence of the stock low pass filter contributing to the loss of umph in the neck?
This guy is sort of known as a hack so anything is possible.

I have been following this forum awhile and respect the opinions and advice of the learned community even for the tangental asides. This is my first oppertunity to post a thread. I have yet to crack this guitar open and figure out what this solder monkey (term of enderment) did. I like to visualize possible factors before digging in and hope I'm not too surprised, and like I said, I truly respect this community and it's oppinions. So if anyone else would like to give thier thoeries and expert advice as to this tele's output woes I would greatly appreciate it. We can make this into a contest; if your hypothosis is correct you will recieve 5 slightly used Grover tuners and an authentic, genuine, relic't mim strat middle pickup!

[spud1950]

Could he have reversed the leads?

Most likely the case.The evidence points to reversed leads or a ground/hot reversal somewhere else in the circuit.Since the cover is connected the ground wire, if the leads get reversed and the cover is now connected to hot, it will do exactly what you expiriencing,kill the output of the neck pickup. So that's why it's doing it when played on it's own.It could also now be out of phase with the bridge pickup,so the output of the two together is lowered. If the pickups were wired properly and the ground connection to neck cover was broken, the volume output would not be effected and it would still be ok in combination with the bridge.The neck pickup would however sound a bit brighter because connecting the metal cover to ground bleeds off some of the highs. You've probably noticed that some people prefer to remove the cover altogether from their neck pickups to get a brighter tone out of them.Anyway,your "tech" needs to check his work. You would think he would have noticed this if he ever did indeed test the guitar when he was done.Sorry to say it,but a lot of people who call themselves "techs" really aren't qualified to use that title on themselves.