Do humbuckers have a polarity?

[chevalij]

Odd (brain dead) question. Do humbuckers have a N/S up polarity? I've never bothered to think about it. I guess each coil itself does, but as a whole? No coil splitting involved.

If I had a south up neck, north up mid (basic RWRP singles going on) and a bucker in the bridge, what would happen in the mid switch position? The normal mid/bridge that is.

I don't wind humbuckers, so this has me a little confused. I've also never owned a strat with a bucker in the bridge.

[Joe Gwinn]

Odd (brain dead) question. Do humbuckers have a N/S up polarity? I've never bothered to think about it. I guess each coil itself does, but as a whole? No coil splitting involved.

For music, all pickups have a polarity. For humbuckers, the two coils are arranged such that the hum part cancels, but the music part adds. This adding and subtracting depends on polarity.

[chevalij]

That makes sense. But I guess I should have phrased my question more in the humbuckers relation to a single coil in the mid position. If Fender pickups are traditionally south up (now) and a RWRP mid is north up, does polarity of the humbucker matter? As I understand, the slug side of the humbucker is normally north up. As this is the side closer to the mid coil, is noise cancelling in 2 position possible with a traditional bucker?

[Stan H]

It would depend on the wind direction/polarity combination. They would have to match the humbucker for everything to be in phase.

[David Schwab]

You can either have the single coil in or out of phase with the humbucker.

Whether or not the magnet on the single coil is North or South doesn't matter as much as the magnet polarity combined with the electrical polarity of the coil.

So the single coil will either be in or out of phase with the humbucker. If it's out of phase, just swap the two wires. You might get partial hum cancellation with the single and hum on, but not much, if at all.

On a guitar with two single coils, can they work like a humbucker wired in parallel, i.e., one North magnet, and one South Magnet, and wired out of phase. Winding reverse and wiring in reverse amounts to exactly the same thing. It's the magnet polarity that make the hum cancelation work, while keeping the two coils in phase with one another. But with a hmbucker and a single coil, you now have three coils, so you can't get them to balance.

To get a humbucker to noise cancel with a single coil, you'd have to switch one coil off in the humbucker, and that coil would have to have the opposite magnetic polarity, and be electrically out of phase with the single coil.

[mottaz]

DiMarzio has hum/single/hum wiring diagrams that shut off one coil of the humbucker when in position 2&4:

http://www.dimarzio.com//media/diagrams/C.pdf

[chevalij]

So, to clarify.... Unless the humbucker is coil split, there is no real option for humbucking in the 2. I'm dealing with three coils, and since two are already humbucking, the third (the single) is going to upset that balance no matter what?

[Possum]

...

I've never put together a humbucker/single coil strat so speaking from ignorance here. But you could check pickup polarity the traditional way by using a cheap analog meter ohmeter, hooking it up with black to ground and then pushing a steel object down to the poles and seeing which way the needle moves, if all pickups move the needle in the same direction they are in phase.

[Zhangliqun]

In my experience, a humbucker on with a single coil is less noisy than a single coil by itself, but obviously noisier than the humbucker by itself. Seems to work pretty much as you would think.

[Brian H.]

I have an old MIJ HSS Squire contemporary Strat that I have installed a GFS power rails bucker into, and in coil-tapped mode it is in phase with the middle, and out of phase with the neck, so the typical SSS noise-cancelling combinations don't work. The same pickups all seem to contribute output equally whether paired humbucker/middle or humbucker/neck.