Seymour Duncan Active Pickup Blackout Dead

[Claudios]

Hi Guys,
this is my first post here, thank you very much for your attention,
i love seymour duncan's tone since early 90's
i had many different pickups such as parallel axis, slash's signature, pearly gates and others
Sold some of then and kept a pair of Active Seymour Duncan's Blackout (they rock!)
But one day, my neck pickup died, no sound at all,
Let me state that there is no problem at jacks, wires, soldering, battery, etc i am sure that is dead.
What i need to know is if active pickups are more fragile than passive ones?
I sold my other seyumour duncan passive pickups and choose to keep the blackouts and
they are like new (they have in fact some years but are mint)
i removed the pickup and used a multimeter to check it * seems that preamp is bad, signal seems to be driven to the preamp but is not coming out of it, only the out middle ground terminal is okay...
since it is all inside that epoxy resin i have nothing to do in order to fix it...
It is frustrating, the only thing that i can imagine is that some pedal could have damaged this pickup, i used for some years with no problem, checked some old pedals like an old Zoom 505, was all working fine, it is the last thing i remember before i realise that it is broken...
can you give me some tips, advices or something like that, i felt insecure about active pickups, are expensive, if i could predicted that i would never sold that old passive pickups that i loved...
i look for this info at google and stuff but did not found any important information regarding this issue.
many thanks
CLaudio

[Mincer]

Welcome to the forum!

I am sorry your active pickup is dead. Occasionally, there are people who sell working ones on this forum. I've never seen that active pickups are more fragile, though. We get a few people here with the same issue you have. But not a lot.

[Masta' C]

I wouldn't say that active pickups like the Blackouts are more "fragile" than passive pickups, but they are certainly more complex. The integrated preamp in active pickups adds an additional potential failure point that passive pickups don't have. My guess is that the preamp is where your problem lies.

[Claudios]

Hi guys thanks for your help

I had a good luck and i am glad to let you know that my pickup is back from the ashes!

it ressurected... that is how it happened:

i was trying to hook some wire in the back of the pickup to see if i could
use it as a passive pickup and was wondering on how to cut that epoxy resin to
check the pickup from inside

i tried even to place the good bridge blackout pickup into the neck position plug/slot
to check for possible cable failures and again wiring was fine

but after testing the pickup as passive using ground with input (+ and - together didn't work) so tried separeted ground + (input +) also
ground with (input -)

the pickup made some sounds and results was not good to make this passive mode work

as i had used the iron soldering tool to hook that cables i removed then from the preamp... i had that idea of testing then again after
heating it and it worked again!


just like magic. glad also that i did not cutted or melted that resin neither brought another pickup to replace it...

[Masta' C]

Interesting! Perhaps flexing made the pin connections come loose inside somehow and applying heat repaired the solder job. It'll be interesting to see if the problem returns or not.

[Mincer]

Well, how does it sound?

[Claudios]

Interesting! Perhaps flexing made the pin connections come loose inside somehow and applying heat repaired the solder job. It'll be interesting to see if the problem returns or not.

I am testing everyday, glad that still working

[Claudios]

Well, how does it sound?

Sounds okay as usuall

Hope it will stay stable like that

thanks for your attention and if i notice something different i will let you know.