Bridge and Neck HB - attract or repel?

[neverwind]

Hi everybody,

I've got a question I haven't been able to find a discussion or an answer for

Let's say we have a guitar with a HSH pickup configuration.
How is the different way of placing the pickups affecting the sound?
What I mean is the following:

Bridge attracts with Middle attracts with Neck or
Bridge attracts with Middle repels Neck or
Bridge repels Middle attracts Neck or
Bridge repels Middle repels Neck

Hopefully someone can help out on this one!

Thanks,
Bobby

 

[SJ318]

Re: Bridge and Neck HB - attract or repel?

Hello
When you say Repel, do you mean "out of phase - extremely thin and nasal" or do you mean the sound commonly referred to as "quack" where the pickups together are not as loud, but have a kind of "Good" hollow sound, like Clapton did with his Strat on Derek and the Dominos?
I am currently using an S in the middle and an H in the bridge. I don't use the neck with this particular guitar for a lot of boring reasons. My H bridge loses a little volume when I use it with my S in the middle, but is it a very Hendrix kind of sound, extremely pleasing to my ears. NOT thin at all. I have used an HSH before and the same thing with my neck H and my middle S. Once I wired the hot of my middle S to the ground wire, and the "out of phase bad nasally sound" was horrible with both humbuckers - but each pickup alone was fine.
So I got a little confused with the wiring colors and just assumed I had the correct wire. I hope this is getting you closer to your question, and maybe an answer. Repel is an unusual term, normally reserved for magnet issues, which if put in the wrong way (north/south-over/under) will sound bad as if I wired it incorrectly again. So to say "repel" and "attract" is somewhat unusual also. Maybe attract is the word you are using to describe the good sound with a single coil and a humbucker. I am guessing, of course.
As some say: Hope This Helps
Steve Buffington

 

[neverwind]

Re: Bridge and Neck HB - attract or repel?

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your reply!
Although English is not my native language, I was actually wondering about the magnets

I have a friend who claims, apart from the difference coming from the wiring, there's a difference in putting your Bridge and Neck pickups in the guitar the same way they would attract when put next to each other versus when they are installed in the guitar the same way they repel when put next to each other.
Hope that clears it up a bit.

Thanks,
Bobby

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Bridge and Neck HB - attract or repel?

Humbuckers have a north and south magnetic pole facing the strings. So they don't attract each other. They are always magnetically neutral.

It makes no difference to the sound.

With a single coil you might have north up. This affects how the pickup sees the string moving. So changing the magnet polarity changes the phase. And so does reversing the coil direction. But you can't hear the change in polarity unless you combine two pickups.

But it's not because the pickups are attracting each other. They are too far from one another. It's because of the way the pickup senses the magnetized strings.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Bridge and Neck HB - attract or repel?

Generally, two humbucking pickups purchased as a set will be magnetically in phase.

That means that if you place them face to face, screw coil to screw coil and slug coil to slug coil, they will repel.

Just like placing the north pole of a magnet against the north pole of another magnet, they will repel.