Actual Reverse Winding

[Mike Sulzer]

In a series connected humbucker with the cores grounded, consider the top coil, the one that does not have one connection grounded. The capacitance to ground at the pickup output is different depending on whether the "start" or "finish" is the output lead. This is an effect that matters only at very high frequencies, and may not be significant for the sound in practice. Neither type of connection is symmetrical as far as electric fields are concerned, and this shows up when you make careful measurements at high frequencies. This is why, in measuring effects relating to string sampling (Sampling the string: differences between single coil and), I eventually used an instrumentation amp to get as near to perfect symmetry as possible.

[CRU JONES]

In a series connected humbucker with the cores grounded, consider the top coil, the one that does not have one connection grounded. The capacitance to ground at the pickup output is different depending on whether the "start" or "finish" is the output lead. ....

This is all I am saying: There are two ways to achieve RWRP to make your "humbucker" happen.

Are the two ways different? YES

How are they different? Capacitance! That is it.

It is theoretical. Is it enough capacitance? Is it within range of useful frequencies? Wind it, and find out if it has practical use. Or don't wind it and come to a conclusion anyway. That is up to you.

Peace,
Ethan Spaulding

[David Schwab]

Wind it, and find out if it has practical use. Or don't wind it and come to a conclusion anyway.

Have you tried it? Mike is pointing out what I already said, which is it has no noticeable affect at all on the tone. I know this because I've tried it on a number of different pickup designs.

The ONLY reason Fender winds pickups in reverse is to prevent noise if you touch the ungrounded magnets. That's it. The Mustang guitar had phase switches, and because the pickup would hum when you touched the poles when the polarity was reversed, they used closed covers so that the poles would not be exposed.

Also, if you make a humbucker wound on ungrounded magnets, and it's wired in parallel like a Musicman bass, you should reverse wind the coils for the above reason.

But it wont give you tonal options for pickup design.

[fieldwrangler]

Wonder if the often-deployed Common Core of a sidewinder format introduces any other relevant effects? I'm not looking for tonal options, just trying to pay attention to possible electrostatic & EM coupling effects in the Practical Embodiments of these things.

Yet another thing to investigate in the coming weeks...

[David Schwab]

Wonder if the often-deployed Common Core of a sidewinder format introduces any other relevant effects? I'm not looking for tonal options, just trying to pay attention to possible electrostatic & EM coupling effects in the Practical Embodiments of these things.

Yet another thing to investigate in the coming weeks...

I've also done sidewinders both ways. I currently wind them in opposite directions, but that's just a by product of the way the bobbins go on my winder. They are actually wound the same until you flip them on opposite sides.

I detected no difference in tone.