peter green '59 paul sound

[David Schwab]

I'm with David on this one... I've heard some people argue that one polarity is fundamentally different than another, and in a deep physical sense that may be true, (have your clown posse picture handy, David?) but I've never heard a north pickup sound different than a south pickup. I've done this test (albeit in a sloppy way) in a tele. You can re-magnetize the pickups while in the guitar and give yourself a pretty quick test. Speed seems to be the key in doing these tests - wait a couple hours and you forget how something sounds. I didn't hear any difference after I did the test a few times (had to get the magnetization consistent). On a guitar with a phase switch, you can listen to how it sounds solo with the wires reversed in real time. There is a small, hard to define difference.

Back in the 70s when I was a younger man with better hearing (not that it's bad now), I had phase switches on all my instruments. It just seemed like a cool thing; an extra set of tones for the coast of a switch.

I was able to hear the difference between a single pickup when I switched the switch back and forth. I can't even describe what I heard, as it was very subtle. I realize now it might very well have been due to the waves' polarity coming out of the speakers. So one way they were pushing, and the other pulling. As with a humbucker, it's always the case with one coil "pulling" and the other "pushing". But that's also how the string vibrates over the pickup.

It might have also had to do with more wiring in one position than the other.

But it's nothing you would have heard when playing along with another musician. So my opinion is it makes no difference. I have reversed the polarity of pickups by swapping the magnet around to get them back in phase. Once again, I don't hear a difference.

The examples given seem to be the cumulative affect of flipping the pickup around, and changing the wiring to the vintage style.

The heart of the original argument seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong) that there are two ways to be out of phase. Magnets AND windings being against each other ends up turning it 360 degrees and is IN phase. So, you have to reverse only the magnets or only the windings. So, the idea here is that one method will perform differently than the other. Since on a solo pickup reversing just the magnets has little or no effect and reversing windings make a very small difference, it is hard to figure out where this could come from. I'm willing to admit I haven't tried it and can't say for sure, but I seriously have my doubts.

But then again, I'm biased because I think out-of-phase wiring sounds horrible pretty much all the time.

Phase (actually polarity, phase is a time domain affect) is only relevant when it's compared to another pickup. The windings and magnets have to match up. In the case of humbuckers, you have two coils electrically out-of-phase, and then put back in phase with the magnet. So which way is right depends on what you are comparing it to.

You can flip the magnet around on the neck pickup, and then flip the magnet around on the bridge pickup, and they are back in phase. You can do the same thing with the wiring too. People are getting hung up on one coil having a different shape pole than the other. That might very well make one coil more or less sensitive, but the output from the humbucker is a composite, so it's not like one coil of the two will be at odds with the other pickup.

[David Schwab]

When two HB pickups are combined, the string is vibrating over two north and two south poles simultaneously. True, the sensing area is essentially the gap between the screws and slugs within each pickup (where the north and south poles "surface"), but in another almost macro sense a pair of HBs with the same pole oriented towards the middle (and outside) is a bit like one very big multi-coil P90, isn't it? (disregarding the large gap between the two sections of whatever pole is facing the middle)

Assuming it's a standard humbucker, and the screw and slug sides sound different--and it seems to be more of the case with metal covers on the pickup--you are probably getting more signal from the screw coil. So flipping the pickup around changing where on the string that it's sensing.

With symmetrical coils/poles it doesn't make any difference. Either way the pickup is in sounds the same.

[Mike Sulzer]

True, the sensing area is essentially the gap between the screws and slugs within each pickup (where the north and south poles "surface"),

1.) You have to magnetize the string with the permanent field to get the pickup to work. You have a stronger permanent field near the pole pieces, not uniformly between the screws and slugs. Also, you want the field pointing through the coil, not perpendicular to it.

2. The vibrating magnetized string produces a changing field through the coil. It is sensed more strongly when:
a. The source of the vibrating field is closer to the pole piece.
b. The vibrating field that passes through the coil points directly through the loops of wire.

Thus, the sensing area is heavily biased to those areas that are over or nearly over the pole pieces. A humbucker has two sensing areas for each string. This is part of what gives it its sound.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I was able to hear the difference between a single pickup when I switched the switch back and forth. I can't even describe what I heard, as it was very subtle. I realize now it might very well have been due to the waves' polarity coming out of the speakers. So one way they were pushing, and the other pulling. As with a humbucker, it's always the case with one coil "pulling" and the other "pushing". But that's also how the string vibrates over the pickup.

Yeah, I think we're hearing the same thing, David. That is very much what I've heard. I'd wire up a phase switch for someone, and out of curiosity listen when it was just one pickup. And, I think you're right about the speakers. I hadn't thought about it until now, but I used to have a Cyber-Twin, and one of the options was that you could reverse the polarity on the speakers via a digital setting, and the strange subtle difference is darn close to what I had heard.