Newbie question, how to prevent pup from losing charge?

[doodie]

I was hunting used pup from ebay and I saw broken pup time to time with half of normal ohm reading or sometime one coil with will have normal reading while the other with less than half of the other coil. And all of them are made in less than 10 years. So my guess is someone did something stupid or wrong and cause the pup to lose charge.

I remember my local guitar tech told me pickup do lose charge over time and I should store them in seperate boxes instead of storing them together. But are there anything else that I need to watch out for to prevent this from happening? what about humbucker with one of the coil have less charge than the other coil? how did that happen??? is it possible to fix(recharge)pup?

I just started soldering not long ago, if I wired the pup wrong will it damage the pup? especially active pup, i read somewhere if you wire the active pup wrong you might fried the pup...

Can some expert here please answer my question? ThankS!!!

 

[jeremy]

Re: Newbie question, how to prevent pup from losing charge?

there are two major components to a guitar pup, the coil or coils and the magnet or magnets.

the coil is thousands of wraps of wire and the coil is what you read the dc resistance of. coils will not lose charge. an 8k coil made in 1952 should still read 8k today. if the coil reads half what it should then the coil is damaged somewhere.

magnet can lose charge and alnico magnets lose charge over time but very very very slowly unless something else acts on them, like another magnet.

magnets can be pretty easily recharged. a damaged coil can also be repaired but it can require rewinding the entire thing which can cost as much as a new pup.