Zhangliqun
Questionologist
So I'm winding a set of dogears for a guy tonight, and my testbed for dogears isn't a dogear guitar but a Hamer Special P90. I've used it for years to test dogears because I'd always gotten orders only for bridge dogears because most folks just want them for a Junior or similar guitar, and this guitar it happens you can sit a dogear in at the bridge position with enough clearance -- even though it's a soapbar guitar.
This is not the case with the neck position so to test the phasing (make sure before shipping I didn't goof and put the mags in the wrong way or something), I hold the 2nd pu ABOVE the strings and even though I know I've wound it the right direction and the polarity is right, the durn thing is out of phase with the other pu.
Same with the third P90 (I'm winding 3 P90's for this guy's ES-5 clone). At this point I'm tearing my hair out and asking God for patience, switching the leads from hot to ground and vice versa, trying to make this right. Then out of curiosity I slide a bit of the pu UNDER the strings as they would normally be and VOILA -- they're in phase again.
The moral of the story (other than that a hair puller problem is an opportunity to learn something new) is that it is not entirely true that physical positioning doesn't affect the phasing of one pu vs. another in the same guitar. As long as both pickups are on the same side of the strings, physical positioning doesn't matter, but if they're on opposite sides, they are out of phase.
As I reflected on this, it made sense because each pickup is seeing the opposite side of the vibration of the string, ie: one pu sees the string come TOWARD it at the exact same moment the other pu sees the string move AWAY from it, creating electronically opposite signals that cancel each other out.
Anyway, a combination D'OH/VOILA moment I thought I'd share...
This is not the case with the neck position so to test the phasing (make sure before shipping I didn't goof and put the mags in the wrong way or something), I hold the 2nd pu ABOVE the strings and even though I know I've wound it the right direction and the polarity is right, the durn thing is out of phase with the other pu.
Same with the third P90 (I'm winding 3 P90's for this guy's ES-5 clone). At this point I'm tearing my hair out and asking God for patience, switching the leads from hot to ground and vice versa, trying to make this right. Then out of curiosity I slide a bit of the pu UNDER the strings as they would normally be and VOILA -- they're in phase again.
The moral of the story (other than that a hair puller problem is an opportunity to learn something new) is that it is not entirely true that physical positioning doesn't affect the phasing of one pu vs. another in the same guitar. As long as both pickups are on the same side of the strings, physical positioning doesn't matter, but if they're on opposite sides, they are out of phase.
As I reflected on this, it made sense because each pickup is seeing the opposite side of the vibration of the string, ie: one pu sees the string come TOWARD it at the exact same moment the other pu sees the string move AWAY from it, creating electronically opposite signals that cancel each other out.
Anyway, a combination D'OH/VOILA moment I thought I'd share...
