pickup demagnetized?

[guitarzan]

I had a couple of pickups set too low in a pickguard on a strat- so much in fact that they'd dropped below the length of the threads on the adjustment screw. I unscrewed the pickguard and lifted up high enough to stick a puddy knife in there to lift up the pickup so I could rescrew the adjustment down in to it.

Once I screwed the pickguard back down and brought the strings back up to pitch, the middle pickup is almost inaudible. There is a little bit of sound if I scratch on the pole pieces with a screwdriver but no real sound in the middle position- and no real contribution of the middle pup in the 2 and 4 positions.

Is it possible that I somehow demagnetized that middle pup?? And I would just swap out the pup for another middle one, but this is a surprisingly lovable old highway 1 strat that I got for $300. I love it enough to have kept it for a couple of years but not enough to start putting money into it.

[tom]

it's fairly unlikely that you demaged it with a putty knife. usually it takes an opposing mag field. i would check it with an ohm meter to make sure a wire didn't get broken. if that looks ok, i could remag it for you.

[guitarzan]

in checking it, where would I put the test pins? On the tiny in and out leads on the side of the pickup (the start and end points it looks like) or on the poles themselves? or....? This is new territory for me. Well... not breaking stuff, but playing with pickup innards.

[tom]

you can check from the 5 way ends of the wires, just make sure that pickup is not on at the time. otherwise you'll read through the controls and gets erroneous readings. compare it to the neck pickup readings, they should be about the same.