Dead neck pickup on T-40

Hello everyone,

I recently got my hands on a T-40 with a dead neck pickup. I diagnosed the problem by doing the following:

I desoldered the neck pickup entirely. Then I clamped the hot/ground wires from one of the neck pup coils to the appropriate places on a 1/4" plug at the end of a standard guitar cable. Plugged the cable into an amp. Reinserted the pickup in the body cavity, strung up a string and plucked it...nothing. Tried this with the second coil of the pickup...still nothing.

I know the cable and amp are good, as I was able to play the bridge pickup through them both, before taking the bass apart. So, the neck pickup seems to be pretty well kaput.


I have three questions.

1) Is there a difference between the T-40's neck and bridge pickups apart from their locations on the bass? I generally favor a rounder, more mellow tone and I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to buy a replacement pickup. In the meantime, I'm going to try swapping the dead neck pup with the bridge pup. I wanted to know, out of curiosity, if I'd be missing anything tonewise, compared to a working, stock configured blade on the neck setting.

2) Does anyone have any advice about troubleshooting the dead pickup further, how to proceed, or whether it's even worth it to spend time doing this?

3) Any tips on good replacement pickups, ones that are possibly a bit cheaper than Dark Stars? How impossible is it to get ahold of original TC-40 blades? Anyone got a working neck pickup lying around they might be willing to part with?


Thanks for any help you might be able to pass along. Glad to be part of such a passionate community.

/ J