Hello, I am looking for some help trouble-shooting my Strat and it's neck pickup. I'll provide a lot of detail in hopes of answering questions in advance.
I have a late '90s Mexican Strat that I outfitted with Texas Specials about 20 years ago. Early in the pandemic, so about eight months ago, I upgraded the electronics and wired it with a no-load master volume, no-load master tone, and blender control. I also went with a smaller cap on the tone control. All went just fine, sounded great, etc.
Just before Christmas, I plugged in, and my neck pickup was silent. The other switch positions sounded just fine, except that the neck/middle position (I'm always confused whether that's 2 or 4) sounded identical to the middle-only sound. So I went under the hood hoping to find a broken solder joint that was easy to fix.
I used a multimeter to test resistance at the jack. The middle and bridge pickups tested fine. The neck didn't register. I set the multimeter to test connectivity, and checked the output wire from each pickup (with the switch in a proper position) for connectivity with the volume pot's output lug. All tested as they should, including the neck pickup. I then checked each pickup's ground wire for connectivity with ground, and all tested as they should. All of my connections also look and feel quite solid.
So, I'm about as sure as I can be that all of my connections are good because (1) the guitar worked fine a few weeks ago and (2) the multimeter demonstrates connectivity where it should. Yet the neck pickup remains silent.
Could the pickup have suddenly gone bad on me? Are there other tests I should run? Part of me would welcome an excuse to get some different pickups (something noiseless, since I'm just playing at home), but I'd rather save the money if I can.