Magnet Flip vs. Wiring out of Phase

[JGundry]

This has nothing to do with the pickup being out of phase. If you want to test that, you need a balanced output by using 4 conductor cable, or at least two conductors and a shield.

I think it's a capacitance effect by having all the metal parts in the pickup hot.

Of course you are going to get more noise too.

The same thing happens when you reverse wind the pickup. In fact the pickup in this clip was reverse wound. So it can't be a capacitance effect because the ground is correct for the second clip. I tried it with a normal wound pickup and the effect is the same when you switch the hot and ground. I probably just made this very confusing but really it's simple. Reverse wind or change the hot and ground before the pot and you get the clearer tone of the second clip.

Interestingly if you flip the neck pickup around ala Peter Green the effect is more pronounced. I don't think it is due to coil offset because the slug coil is only slightly hotter on this pickup.

[Possum]

...

I had a thought, wow....
Measure the gauss on the magnet and then at the poles. If one is noticeably stronger, I mean if your magnet is significantly stronger on one pole, maybe thats what you're hearing, possible. On favorie early patent both screw poles and slug poles have nearly the same gauss at pole tops. If this becomes unbalanced then flipping the magnet would favor the stronger gauss side.....maybe....

[David Schwab]

I have put phase switches on many guitars, and basses too, starting back in 1970, and I get no difference in tone when it's reversed. These have always had the proper wiring to do it though, not making the shield hot. You can't do phase reversal correctly on a 2 conductor coax.

Even my Fender Mustang sound the same when you reverse one pickup. It has a phase switch for each pickup.

I don't have any guitars wired up for phase reversal at the moment, but I'd be happy to wire one up and record it.

Obviously something is going on there.

Now when you say it's reverse wound, you mean both coils? So you are swapping it out with a non reverse wound pickup to do the A/B test? Or are you still switching the hot and ground? If you are still making the metal parts hot, that doesn't count. You just introduced all that stuff as part of the coils.

First thing is dump the braided coax and wire up a 4 conductor cable, and then try switching the output wires.

[David Schwab]

OK, here's my test. The only guitar I had setup where I could do a proper phase reversal (i.e., multi conductor shielded cable) is my set neck Tele with a Lawrence L-250 at the neck.

So I unsoldered the pickup from the 5-way switch, and used a 1/4" jack with short leads and alligator clips. It bypassed the volume and tone controls.

This was plugged into the "Guitar (Hi-Z)" jack on my Roland digital mixer, which was set up with a clean twin amp patch. This went via S/PDIF to my Mac, and into Spark XL, which is a stereo audio editor.

I played a phrase, stopped and reversed the two wires to the alligator clips, and played the phrase again. I thin edited out the long pause when I was switching the wires.

Phase test

Clearly I'm not getting the results you got. I really think it's because you have all the metal parts of the pickup hot.

So the question is what's going on with your pickup. You said you wound some in reverse. I assume when you don't switch the wires around they sound just like the pickups not wound in reverse. So it's not phase, it's the way you are switching the wires. Try using 4 conductor cable, and I bet it will sound as much the same as mine did.

This is why people flip the magnet. It's easier than unsoldering the hook up wires to a 2 conductor coax. If you have a 4 conductor cable, you don't have to do that, and it's a simple thing to switch the phase.

Also here's the waveform display. You can see that the second take is flipped outside down.

[David King]

Which position has the outside of the coil going to ground?

[David Schwab]

Which position has the outside of the coil going to ground?

Neither. Remember, there's two coils. With a standard humbucker, the finish (outside) ends of the coil are in the series link. The screw start (inside) goes to ground and the slug start goes to hot.

If you reverse wind one coil, and wire them in phase, then it's one of each.

So that's not the issue, and the outside of the coil is not separate from the inside.

The issue here is he is reversing the wires so that the coax shield, metal baseplate and the poles are now hot. That has to be the reason, as just reversing the polarity of the pickup has no effect on the tone, because it's only out-of-phase when compared to another pickup, and not on its own.

I bet if he wires the pickup to a 4 conductor cable, or even a two conductor plus shield, to remove the coils from the ground plane, he wont hear a difference.

As it is, you can't play that way, because it will be noisy, and if the string touches the metal parts on the pickup, it will short the signal out.

[JGundry]

Okay I messed with this some more until one of my alligator clips went out. and I think I got my wires crossed literally and figuratively. The mud is caused because of the ground becoming hot. I tried it again with the non reverse wound humbucker and it muds up when the ground becomes the hot. I should know better than to go with late night conclusions.

So I guess this will devolve into a Peter Green thread. So here it is, reverse winding has a little lower output middle position tone than a magnet flip and with less crunch. I swear though there is a little difference in tone to the neck pickup when reverse wound. Just a little cleaner tone on the neck reverse wound. Which one is more Peter Greenish? I don't know. Both methods have their benefits. I asked the harmonica player in my band which sounded more Greenish and he picked the reverse wound out of phase tone.

[Possum]

video...

Here's a great downloadable video from Google, Fleetwood Mac, The Early Years:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...ly+years&hl=en
The download is high quality video and audio, alot of the Peter Green YouTube videos came from this video so you can really get your fill of watching live playing. How accurate the tone is though is questionable to me, the recordings of the live stuff are really lacking in treble content, the cymbals on the drums are a clue. Cool stuff though....

[David Schwab]

Okay I messed with this some more until one of my alligator clips went out. and I think I got my wires crossed literally and figuratively. The mud is caused because of the ground becoming hot. I tried it again with the non reverse wound humbucker and it muds up when the ground becomes the hot. I should know better than to go with late night conclusions.

So I guess this will devolve into a Peter Green thread. So here it is, reverse winding has a little lower output middle position tone than a magnet flip and with less crunch. I swear though there is a little difference in tone to the neck pickup when reverse wound. Just a little cleaner tone on the neck reverse wound. Which one is more Peter Greenish? I don't know. Both methods have their benefits. I asked the harmonica player in my band which sounded more Greenish and he picked the reverse wound out of phase tone.

I figured the hot ground was causing a capacitance issue. But there is also the idea that since the cores are grounded in the middle of the coil, its good to have the ground connection on the start, since having it the other way might raise the capacitance in the coil.

I've tried reverse winding one coil to try this out and didn't notice any change in tone, but that was on a bass.