Screwed up pickup - Neck humbuker won't work

[RG Guy]

I'm having trouble with my neck pickup (stock Ibanez Powersound humbucker). When I got the guitar it worked fine. It just stopped working yesterday. The guitar has a H/S/H configuration. When I use the neck or neck and middle together there is no sound.

I didn't mess with the wiring but I did do some modding. I installed strap locks and a tremsetter. My best guess is that it happened from the complications with the tremsetter. I had to do some drilling into the body and tremolo block and wood/metal shavings may have shorted something out.

I tried rocking the selector switch back and forth but that didn't work. I checked out the wiring and all the connections are strong and right down to spec (according to the Ibanez wiring diagram). I also tried checking for continuity on all connections and all connections to the pots showed up good. For some reasons the selector switch and ALL pickups don't show continuity so I couldn't figure the problem out with that method. I have no clue what to check next.

There is something strange though (and may be a clue) When I use the middle pickup, you can "hear" it from the neck and bridge also. I tapped the magnetic pole pieces with a screwdriver and I heard it on my amp. In the bridge position only the bridge pickup sounded. In the bridge/middle position, both sounded. In the neck position all sounded (but the bridge and neck were faint). In the middle/neck position there was no sound as with the neck alone. Again this could be the way it was wired but I am not sure since my other guitar is a strat and it is wired differently.

[bachle7]

The hot wire from your neck pickup is shorted to ground somewhere. *I don't know about hearing the other pickups when in the switch position #3, though.
If you did get some metal filings into the electronics, you can try to blow it out or get a little compressed air bottle *and do it. *Try to take a really good look to see if any wires on the switch are very close or touching.

[RG Guy]

I started to take the guitar apart and I found out that one of the screws in the for the trem setter in the trem cavity penetrated the wire for the pickup. That in turn grounded it with the bridge ground since the mounting hook on the tremsetter is connected to the tremsetter which is connected to the bridge. I unscrewed the mounting hook on the tremsetter and wrapped it in electrical tape. Now the problem is gone. Thanks for the catch. About the middle pickup thing, are all three pickups supposed to go active in the middle position? The bridge and neck are active but faint when I put the switch in the middle position.

[bachle7]

Ouch! *At least you found your problem. *You should only be able to hear the middle pup when in position #3. *Maybe your switch has some problems? *Personally, I think that having all 3 pups on in position #3 would be very cool. *-Andy