Does turning an unbalanced humbucker upside down affect the tone?

[freefrog]

Thx for your help about pics, fellow members!

Artie, below are some screenshots shared thx to the "Upload attachments" button: your strategy seems to solve my issue. Thx again!

I won't bore everybody by sharing one more time what I've already posted about unbalanced pickups on the Music-electronics forum.

Let's just share a few things showing how "symetrical" Gibson style humbuckers are in fact not that systematically symetrical...


Each screen shows the electrically induced response of each coil in each humbucker tested (T-Top replicas symetrically wound with poly wire in both cases and whose cables are braided shielded coaxial ones).
Horizontal scale is linear. Vertical scale goes by steps of 1dB. No integrator was used to flatten the response in the bass (I don't like this method). Each pickup was loaded resistively and capacitively, since they have been tested in a guitar with 500k pots, through a 10' cable feeding a 1M input...

Pic 1 with black and pink lines shows the response of the bridge pickup... one can see how the use of different pole pieces + the presence of a keeper bar, both giving different inductance values to the two coils, give them different individual resonant frequencies (not shown in this pic) and make their respective responses NOT balanced beyond the main resonant peak, in the high harmonic range... that's what one hears when a Gibson style pickup is flipped in its cavity (subtle difference but not aural illusion).

Pic 2 with black and blue lines shows the response of a neck unit, fitted with shorter screw poles than usual... Shorter screw poles = less ferrous content = less inductance, closer to the value of the coil with slugs = more symetrical responses. The small remaining difference between coils, of 0.5 to 1dB, is due to Foucault currents, still logically stronger from the coil with screws.

NOTE - All pickups with screws and slugs don't have the same kind of response than in pic 1. How coils are wound and their inner parasitic capacitance also matter here. But clearly, the differences evoked here happen less easily in really symetrical humbuckers, like Filter-Tron's for instance.

FWIW - Another useless geeky contribution.

 

[Juanhanglo]

If the offset is large like in alot of dimarzio dual resonance pickups, it will most definitely sound different depending which way you install them.


The d sonic, air norton/norton, and Steve's special are 3 good examples of this. thve experienced all 3 over the years.

I find that the bridge position is more sensitive to orientation than the neck.

This is kinda cool because it gives you another variable to tweak to your liking

 

[IMENATOR]

Just in theory I would think yes, one coil gets a bit more bass and the other one less with a touch more treble, then being not balanced means each coil has its own character that is not replicated by the other coil. Being that said I am not sure how much that would change the humbucker tone but I would expect it to change the split coil sound for sure.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Is it really that much different?

It can be.
The difference in a P-Rails flipped in the bridge position is huge (especially with the Rail coil). Only a little in the neck position.
But for a normal humbucker the difference in the bridge is slight, and almost imperceptible in the neck.

I love Freefrog's posts because he deals in facts and evidence. And though it is true that there is a factual/theoretical difference that can be measured, in reality, in practical use, the difference in sound when flipping a humbucker can barely be noticed.

 

[freefrog]

Yes, the difference is generally subtle with normal humbuckers and more noticeable with unbalanced coils...

That being said and to come back on topic, let's share below the electrically induced response of both coils in a Custom / 59 hybrid: I've zoomed on the 1khz to 5khz area where was the resonant peak, and left the vertical scale showing the difference of output levels : the Custom coil is 3dB louder @ resonance than the SH1 coil. No need to say that flipping this pickup would change its tone, unless it would be steeply angled under the strings in order to compensate the difference.

 

[Securb]

Hi Jeremy,
I used to upload pics directly on the SD forum but my last attempts have systematically failed...

Use image tags and host the picture elsewhere like Imgur, it seems like more work but with all of the nuances (see what I did there) in posting a picture here it is actually easier.

 

[freefrog]

Use image tags and host the picture elsewhere like Imgur, it seems like more work but with all of the nuances (see what I did there) in posting a picture here it is actually easier.

Thx for your help!

I've already used Imgur or other uploading sites for pics. Some of these pics have vanished with time and as I upload without user account, external hosting becomes annoying anyway when I want to edit a pic for whatever reason. That's why I tend to upload directly on the sites where I post. But I agree about the easiness to use Imgur, flickr,imgBB and others.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

FWIW, the D Activator Bridge does change as you flip it. With the hotter coil towards the bridge, it's harder and more attacky and overall more "bridge-y". With the hotter coil towards the neck, it's smoother and fatter and overall very slightly and loosely speaking more "neck-y".

With the Evo Neck, as someone mentioned before, I think the difference is more subtle, but I also wouldn't say I scrutinize neck pickups as much as do bridge pickups.

But even with the D-Activator in the bridge, I wouldn't say it completely transforms it into another pickup.