So... neodymium pickups are an astonishingly bad idea.
I took the A polepiece out of the E-A pickup half, and replaced it with a neodymium slug. I plugged the bass back in and gave it a try. The A definitely had a more strident, full tone. With this in mind I removed the other 3 pole pieces...
Problem! In pushing the pole pieces out for the D and G strings the pickup basically fell apart. The coil separated from the flatwork, breaking the solder joints for the coil. I resoldered the coil, glued the flatwork back on and carried on. Once the glue dried I added my neodymium poles. This worked great for the E-A pickup half, but didn't work out so great for the D-G half. The pickup started tearing itself apart again. Basically the neo magnets weren't playing ball. One was pushing down against the pickup cover and the other was popping out the back of the pickup. The effect of this was to, again, pull the flatwork off the coil, re-breaking the solder points. I resoldered again, glued again, let everything set again... This time the two pole pieces tried to join together in the middle of the pickup. In doing so they somehow ripped through the coil itself, making it read an open circuit.
Anybody know Nordstrand's phone number?