The slow death of pickups

hermannkymn

Hi guys, 

In need of some troubleshoot-related wisdom:

I have a now-discontinued Taylor Solidbody Classic, where one of the unique selling points was the ability of a quick swap of a loaded pick guard for supposed ease of pickup configurations.

Fairly hard to track down, I eventually found this said-loaded pickguard in a Strat-style SSS configuration. Straight forward 'plug and play' install, and all was well. But after a while the bridge pickup had died, and eventually the whole thing went kaputt altogether, rendering an eery silence on all 5 positions. Lack of grounding/shorting doesn't seem to be the issue, and the output jack connections are robust also (tested on the stock pickups). It's the degenerative stages in which it endured that makes it somewhat peculiar.

Before I take it down the guitar hospital, wondering what process of elimination I should go through myself (if at all).

Many gratitude as always in advance on any two cents coming this way,

pintspiller

I'd give the switch a blast of Servicol and off to the docs if that doesn't sort it

ICBM

Open up the guitar and plug it into the amp, turn both controls up full - then touch, in this order:

Middle terminal of volume control

Top (not grounded) terminal of volume control

Connection on switch where the wire from the volume control is connected

Each pickup terminal

If all of those produce a buzz, either the fault is in the ground wiring - unlikely since it would normally hum loudly with nothing touching anything - or all three pickups are dead.

If they don't all buzz, where does it stop?