Opinions on RWRP not sounding as good.

[Ward]

There seems to be a view that pickups wound the same ( ie, no rwrp) in position 2 and 4 in a strat and the middle pos in a Tele sound better than RWRP. Is this opinion shared here in general? Thanks.

[Possum]

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What does "better" mean? The biggest thing is that RWRP gives you a volume drop sometimes. None of the classic recordings of rock and blues history had RWRP guitars back then and hum didn't bother those guys the way it does modern players. On my own strats I usually don't do the hum cancelling thing, but it is old school and very few customers want that.....

[Ward]

What does "better" mean? The biggest thing is that RWRP gives you a volume drop sometimes. None of the classic recordings of rock and blues history had RWRP guitars back then and hum didn't bother those guys the way it does modern players. On my own strats I usually don't do the hum cancelling thing, but it is old school and very few customers want that.....

Better? I dunno, more something, sweeter? more harmonics?
I do notice the volume drop with rwrp and that has always annoyed me, maybe I'll try one of my strats without the rwrp, do you reckon I would need to rewind the middle pickup or could I just swap the wires around which would make the start the hot wire, I can reverse the mag polarity no probs but should I rewind the middle pickup so I keep the hot as the finish end of the coil, would it make a difference tonewise just to test out how it sounds. Thanks for your replay too.

[Possum]

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Yeah for a quick test swap the leads and remagnetize. Though its not good practice to build pickups that way, if you get a short to the poles and you strings happen to touch the poles it will turn the guitar off, short it out. I made a set like that when I was beginning a long time ago and the customer liked the pickups so much he didn't want me to rewind it and said he used the shorting out thing as a guitar trick when he would play, touching a string for the effect of instant switching the sound off and doing it like machine gun style :-)

[Ward]

Thanks mate, so do you hear any diff in tone apart from the no vol drop.

[Possum]

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I haven't played mine in quite some time, I think the tone is richer, try it out and report back....

[Ward]

Will do. Cheers.

[Ward]

Right then, I've had a fair time playing the un rwrp setup, I thought I could hear that pos 2, br n mid, had a more natural tone, it was very subtle, there still is a slight vol drop but that could be simply the loss of highs ( compared to br alone) giving that illusion but I'm pretty sure the tone was a little more open sounding than with rwrp, of course, the longer I played the harder it was to know what I was hearing, pos 2 being my fav position on a strat I didn't really do a lot of playing in the 4th pos and comparing it to the neck pickup although it did indeed ( pos 4) seem to open up a tad compared to rwrp, still a small volume drop there as well I thought. I was playing through my JTM-50 clone with Mullard 34s real clean and as I said, the more I played the more I just didn't know what differences I was hearing, I have a number of SSS strats here, all with my pickups in them but they all sound different so that didn't help at all. Of course the noise was now bugging me as well so I put it back to rwrp.
When I first played it again with the rwrp (pos2) I couldn't help feeling that something was missing, something very nice, whether it was just the noise and with the noise you get a different perspective, I can't say, whatever the diff, it is very subtle, in the end, after going back to rwrp I was very happy that the noise was gone, if I was missing any openness in pos 2 I had only to play for another 5 minutes and I couldn't tell.
It would be interesting to hear what others think about this hoo haa. For me, I think I'll stick with the noiseless option although I might just do one of the stats noisy, I'm sure there is something missing with rwrp and not just the noise/hum/crap, whatever you want to call it.
Anyone else got thoughts on this?

[Bill M]

Don't care for RWRP. You still get hum in 1,3,and 5 positions. With RWRP in the 2 and 4 positions you are hum bucking and therefore cancelling some frequencies. It just doen't sound natural to me on a strat or tele.

As possum stated, the classic recordings were not done with RWRP pickups, yet most players want the RWRP setup and still sound like their heros. Its just not going to happen, well, not in the 2, and 4 positions anyway. Just my take on this subject matter.

Bill

[David Schwab]

How often do you really use 2 and 4 anyway? As far as old recordings... Players used to get the 3 way switches stuck in between back in the day before the 5 ways, but many didn't even bother. Some players didn't even use the middle pickup at all (like Blackmore).

It's a cool tone for some stuff, like clean funk rhythm playing, but to worry about it being hum canceling makes no sense... it's not like you would play that way all the time.

I don't have single coils in any of my guitars, so I have no opinion on how RWRP sounds.

[mkat]

I use the 5 switching positions for various things (mostly 3, 1, 5), I like 2 and 4 too (mostly 2), but I'm more interested in the sound rather than whether it's humcancelling.