Duncans that sound different when reversed

Bowtomecha

New member
I was reading about how some dimarzio humbucker sound noticeably different depending on which coil faces the bridge or neck. Has anybody reversed a Duncan humbucker and found that it changed the sound a lot? Brighter? Warmer? Louder even?
 
I'd think that certainly the humbuckers with uneven or different coils would sound different: Fuglybucker, 59/Custom Hybrid, & P-Rails.
 
Most Duncans are symmetrically wound, so reversing them won't do much.
As mentioned, the 59/Custom Hybrid uses coils wound not just to different strength but with different gauge wire.
And the Fuglybucker & P-Rails - in these the bobbins themselves are fundamentally different.

I know the Brobucker has some coil offset. Some of the newer models may have disparate coils too; can't say for sure.
But traditionally the bulk of the line has used symmetrical winds.

Even in a symmetric wind, there will be a slight difference in output strength between slug coil and screw coil.
But I would expect any change in tone to be pretty minimal compared to asymmetric winds like many DiMarzios.​
 
Putting the screws coil close to the bridge or toward the neck makes a difference whatever is the Gibson style HB used, because coils with slugs and screws are not symmetrical. But yes, this difference is typically subtle.

All humbuckers with 4-conductors cables also exhibit a bigger capacitive asymmetry between coils than those with 2-conductors cables. It changes them in double-tuned devices, introducing a comb filtering effect in the high range, beyond main resonant frequency. This phenomenon can be heard or not when the pickup is reversed, depending on the capacitance measured on each coil with its own wires and therefore on the "crossover" frequency between coils.
As mentioned by Mincer and eclecticsynergy, with something like a Custom/59 hybrid, reversing the PU in its ring should do a noticeable difference -and it does IME, like reversing the ground and hot leads of such an hybrid changes its response... Which is logical since an hybrid has the kind of asymmetrical RC specs and uneven output level per coil implied by the DiMarzio Dual-Resonance thing. :-)

Finally, a good way to change the tone of any humbucker is simply to vary its angle under the strings... :-P
 
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