Dead pickup can make sound ?

[t-minik]

Hi all.

one of my customer give me a 71' telecaster to repair.
the 1st symptoms was when lowering tone control, volume was lowering as well.
that particular telecaster has a classic wiring with 1meg audio pots, 1nF treble bleed cap on volume and 50nF on tone.

here are test i did
- check wiring > it's ok
- de-soldering 50nF tone cap > sounds good (thought it was dead)
- replace cap by à 47nf > like original, tone control lowered the volume
- check pot DC resistance > ok
- check pickups DC resistance (de-soldered) > Higher than 2 mega ohms, my DMM say infinite DC resistance !!!
- tried to resolder eyelet > it remains the same.

pickups are potted with a sort of solid and transparent resin so i can't de-bobbin it to see or repair.

it's very strange and i never saw it before but it could explain the problem, with a really high Zout, tone cap roll out more treble an can cause a volume drop ?


here is my question :

Does a broken coil pickup can make sound ?

[David King]

An open pickup coil can still make some sound due to capacitative coupling between the two section of wire.

[Mike Sulzer]

Does a broken coil pickup can make sound ?

Yes, it can if it is connected to a very high impedance load. There is capacitive coupling across the break. The tone pot and cap can short it out as the pot is turned down.

[cbarrow7625]

Tone pot is making a capacitive voltage divider in htis case then? Interesting.

If it is capacitive coupling across the break then I would expect the pickup to have lower than normal output, less bass than normal (capacitor is basically in series with the break) or both. Does this pickup seem to exhibit these characteristics too?