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Hi folks,

I bought a used set of Harmonic Design Z90 humbucker sized P90's and the neck pickup is dead. Looking past whether the seller was legit (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt), what do we reckon the best course of action is here?

I contacted the company and they said that due to it being an older design it's barely cheaper to repair than to get a new one.

Local pickup heroes have also said as much, so I'm looking at an expensive dud that I can't do much with. The annoying thing is that the bridge Z90 sounds phenomenal, and a matching set would be awesome. I am a bit fearful of throwing good money after bad here, but here are my options;

Try and get a local to rewind it - probably will cost $100+ and might not work.

Get a new neck pickup from Harmonic Design - $125 + shipping for the neck pickup

Get a neck GFS Mean 90 for $50ish, or get a set for $120ish

Just give up.

Would be nice to hear your thoughts.

Surely they should stand by their work and refund you, or replace! Mean 90's rule tho' and GFS are great to deal with

I would probably go for a rewind ...a rewind should guarantee it works, so not sure why you say it might not? IS there something else wrong with it?

Not a great situation tho. Been in many like that myself with various guitar things over the decades.

Measuring DC resistance, what do you get? Low Ohms or open circuit?
If it is the latter, you may want to actually open it up to see if there is a loose connection inside?

As per JVPP's suggestion, if I was repairing it, the first thing I'd do would be to re-solder the coil to cable connections and see if that fixes it. Then I would unwind 100 or so turns and see if that reveals a break. You can sacrifice those 100 turns without much loss of signal. Non-obvious breaks are often in the middle, though, so that's a lottery.

Yeah, already reflowed the solder to see if it made a difference but nothing. The reading I get is 2 Meg. In regards to why I didn't want a rewind, it's more that I don't know what it was meant to sound like and I feel I might as well buy a new one if it's going to cost the same.

What Adrian says! However, I once found a pup with the wire broken right at the end where the wire goes into the centre of the coil. How do I know? I've unwound the whole bloody thing just to find out. Call me curious, (purple, not yellow).

In your situation, I'd do what he suggested, then if no joy, buy another.

TmcB wrote:Yeah, already reflowed the solder to see if it made a difference but nothing. The reading I get is 2 Meg. In regards to why I didn't want a rewind, it's more that I don't know what it was meant to sound like and I feel I might as well buy a new one if it's going to cost the same.

Rewinding will almost certainly sound different to the original tone. So much of the character of a pickup is determined by the exact wire and insulation and how each turn is laid down relative to the others, it would need to be wound by the same person or at least someone with a really good idea of how it was done first time, in order to come out the same.