Weak E string after falling off skateboard

[Owen]

I have a student who was carrying his bass on his back while skateboarding. He fell off. I have mentioned that this was not his finest hour. However the upshot of the fall was that the neck pickup (J type instrument) was pushed down on the E string side. He has lifted it again but strangely the E is now quieter than G D and A on both neck and bridge pickups - solo-ed and together. The instrument is passive. Can anyone suggest any fixes?

TIA.

[Dan Dare]

Take it to a repairer. Could be a number of things. The way they are connected means the pickups in a Jazz are not completely independent of each other, so one does affect the other.

[Vinny]

It's worth chucking a set of strings at it first, if the pickup's been hit then it's more than likely the string took some of the impact. Check for obvious things like cracks in the magnet at the bottom of the pup (if visible, of course!) or pole pieces moved.

'

[Stub Mandrel]

If it has plain PUP covers it may even be that he's lifted the cover but the pickup itself is jammed down, has he taken it right off to check it's intact?

Tell he him that a skateboard pratfall proves his fitness to be a parent 🙂

[Muppet]

As it's affecting both pickups I would look first at components that both share, so I'd say the string, the nut, the tuner and the saddle.  In my experience, if a jazz pickup itself fails, the whole pickup fails, not just the output on one string.  Once you've done the hardware checks then it's down to fault finding on the electronics, but jazz bass wring is not at all complicated. 

[Owen]

My tame luthier student went and tapped all the polepieces with a  allen key and there was equal volume across everything so I gave skater student a spare E string and we shall see what happens. Thanks all..