[Rich Biebel]

There are 2 types of pickups. Magnetic and non magnetic.
Both have a coil of wire inside them and if you use an ohmmeter acorss that coil you should get a reading. I don't know what that reading is or should be for various pickups.....but an open reading would clearly be N/G
The wire is super fine and many turns.

MSD uses the flying magnet style and the magnets are in the wheel. The pickup is non magnetic.

With the ignition on.....you usually can get a spark out of the coil by connecting and than disconnecting the trigger wires that go to the MSD.

1 spark every time you break the connection.....

If you had an MSD tester you could test the box and the coil.

Pickups get blamed for a lot of ignition issues and routinely replaced but I really don't think they are usually the cause of most problems....

In the generator world that I work in .....similar pickups are used to generate a signal from the engine to a controller. We change them a lot when something is not working right but like I said I don't think they are ususally the problem unless they clearly have physical damage. If anything rubs the pickup face then it is likely to be damaged inside.