What happens?

[888guitars]

If one coil of a humbucker was wound in reverse what tone would you get? Is it out of phase with itself?

[big_teee]

It would be out of phase and sound thin.
If you have a 4 wire pickup, you can test all the phase options.
Series, parallel, split, in phase, out of phase.
GL,
T

[Mark Hammer]

Think of it this way. When two pickups are out of phase with each other, the degree of cancellation that occurs depends on how similar the signal is that the two pickups are sensing. If the two signals are very UNalike, then there is little to cancel. If they are identical, then you would get complete cancellation (which is precisely how hum is rejected).

Are the two coils sitting beside each other in a PAF-type humbucker absolutely identical in what they sense? Not 100%, but certainly close enough that if they were wired up the wrong way one would notice a significant drop in signal level, and a very thin sound. Remember that the signal will be more alike for each coil for the low end than the high end. So what you will end up hearing is what is not cancelled: mostly upper mids and highs.

[big_teee]

Mark, Not sure I agree with all of that.
Highs is what you lose with humbuckers, compared to Single Coils.
Mike, Joe, Help us out here?

T

[ScottA]

In general, The relative tone of humbuckers versus single coils has very little (if anything) to do with the fact that hum cancelling is taking place and much more to do with the material differences in the respective pickups, and most specifically the pole piece materials.

[big_teee]

Maybe!
When You split a humbucker to a SC, it gets brighter?

[ScottA]

Maybe!
When You split a humbucker to a SC, it gets brighter?

Well, you're raising the resonant frequency significantly when you do that, the coils in parallel even more. That'll make it sound more "single-coily".

A steel slug or screw will sound different than an AlNiCo cylinder in that same spot.

[big_teee]

I've made humbuckers from two strat type SCs, with Alnico rod magnets.
Wired together in series humbucker mode, They still sound darker than one single strat coil.
The more turns of wire for the pair of coils, the darker they sound.
In contrast you can take the same two coils and convert into a sidewinder with a blade in the middle, and they sound brighter, and more SC sounding.
But, back to the OP, you end up with a thinner sounding pickup when wired wrong out of phase.
T

[John_H]

If one coil of a humbucker was wound in reverse what tone would you get?

If you wire it with the finish of one coil connected to the start of the other it will work normally.

Is it out of phase with itself?

Yes. Out of phase with the other coil.

[Mark Hammer]

One needs to think of it in terms of what different wavelengths "look like" as the string vibrates. For low frequencies - although this will depend on where one happens to be fretting, as well as the absolute pitch of the fundamental - the chances are pretty good that where the string sits, relative to the polepieces/slugs on one coil, is pretty much where it sits relative to the slugs/polepieces in the other coil. As the wavelength shortens - whether we are talking about higher fundamentals, or harmonics of lower fundamentals - the probability that the string moves identically above the two coils starts to decline.

The explanation I'm offering is that, if one is hearing the difference of two anti-phase coils, as opposed to their sum, it will be primarily low end that gets cancelled, for the reasons noted above.

As for top end, I think we are on the exact same page. HBs may not have much top end to hang onto, but whatever little they do have will be largely conserved. Hence a "thin", but not necessarily "bright" sound.

One of the things you'll generally find is that, if you have a SC neck and bridge pickup, that are spaced far apart from each other, you'll certainly hear a difference when they are placed out of phase, but you won't get nearly as much cancellation as if you are comparing neck and middle or middle and bridge in and out of phase. If you compare that against pickups with more bottom (HB, P-90) - especially on a short-scale guitar, where pickup to pickup spacing is kind of cramped - you'll get a more pronounced difference in level betweren in and out of phase, simply because of the much greater overlap in what the two pickups are sensing.

I suppose the worst case scenario would be to place the two coils of a dual-rails pickup (in single-coil form factor) out of phase with each other. What each coil senses, relative to the other, is so near-identical, that "thin" probably doesn't begin to describe what you'd get.

[Mike Sulzer]

Remember that the signal will be more alike for each coil for the low end than the high end. So what you will end up hearing is what is not cancelled: mostly upper mids and highs.

I agree, but it is useful to look at it in terms of harmonics rather than frequency alone. This means that the cancelation effect is different on the bass than treble strings. That is, more harmonics fit in the bandpass (~5KHz) for the bass strings than treble strings. Humbuckers lose the picking transients on the bass strings, very high harmonics that are not audible on the treble strings because they are too high in frequency.

Sampling the string: differences between single coil and humbuckers