Fender pickups polarity

D

drwx

New member
I have an 07 American deluxe hss mahogany strat that I hadn't modified until today. This thing came with 2 tex mex singles and a diamondback humbucker. For another project I had bought a set of 3 cs69 pickups, but only needed 2. On a whim I decided to throw the other one into the neck of this 07 strat. I wired it up and matched the colors... Black to the s1 and white to the 5 way super switch. Closed it all up, strung it, played.. And immediately noticed I was out of phase for neck and middle. Easy fix, so I took it all apart and flipped the wires.. White now to the s1 and black to the 5 way. This time, it wasn't out of phase, but I had no hum cancellation in neck/middle, whereas I did before. I do still have hum cancellation in middle/bridge (the super switch splits the bucker in this position so that only 2 coils are on).

Now... To get him cancellation in neck/middle, do I need to swap the previous neck pickup out with the current middle? I thought that the middle one was already rwrp. I've attached a picture of the wiring before I made changes.
d0af595fab679d6142a6f90b9a05113c.jpg


Original pickups were
Tex mex with black/white wires in neck
Tex mex with red/white wires in middle
Diamondback with 4 wires in bridge

Something tells me that it's gonna be a lot of wire flipping to get hum cancellation. Since I had it before, one of those tex mex is rwrp, and I'm assuming it was the neck. My mind tells me that if I put that one on the middle, I'll need to switch the cs69 wires back to black on the s1 and white on the switch AND switch which coil of the humbucker is on in bridge/middle as well as flipping all 4 humbucker wires.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

Sounds like both of your single coils have the same polarity facing up.

One needs to be the reverse of the other one. That's what the reverse polarity in "reverse wound/reverse polarity" refers too.

Two pickups with the same polarity will repel when you place them face to face. They'll attract and stick together if one is reverse polarity relative to each other.

If you change the existing middle pickup to one that is the reverse of the new neck pickup you'll have humcancelling when those two are combined but then you'll lose humcancelling when the middle and bridge are combined.

You need a CS69 that matches the polarity of the neck pickup you removed.

Put it in the neck position and move the one currently in the neck position to the middle position.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

Lewguitar said:
Sounds like both of your single coils have the same polarity facing up.

One needs to be the reverse of the other one. That's what the reverse polarity in "reverse wound/reverse polarity" refers too.

Two pickups with the same polarity will repel when you place them face to face. They'll attract and stick together if one is reverse polarity relative to each other.

If you change the existing middle pickup to one that is the reverse of the new neck pickup you'll have humcancelling when those two are combined but then you'll lose humcancelling when the middle and bridge are combined.

You need a CS69 that matches the polarity of the neck pickup you removed.

Put it in the neck position and move the one currently in the neck position to the middle position.
Click to expand...
Cs69s only come one way. So my thoughts are that the middle and neck match now, so the previous neck had to be rwrp. If I throw that in the middle, it would take fancy wiring to flip all the things around for the humbucker. Sounds like more work than I care to do. Right now I'm in phase for neck and middle. I think if I go to the effort of swapping the middle around that I might as well switch it to something better while I'm there.

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Re: Fender pickups polarity

Does the cs69 that you put in the neck position have a plastic bobbin? If it does, you can carefully push the mags out, flip them and push them back in.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

You could always re-magnetise the neck position pickup to the opposite of its present polarity orientation.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

Well, so much for that idea. LOL
You could flip the mags in the middle single coil and the HB...... if you didn't have anything else to do
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

You can, indeed, flip the rod magnets in the Fender Tex-Mex single coil pickups. Their bobbins are plastic. There is no possibility of breaking the coil.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

Sounds easier to put the original neck in the middle, then change which hb coil for the bridge is active.

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Re: Fender pickups polarity

I checked when I got home. The neck pickup that I took out is definitely reverse polarity of the cs69 and the middle texmex. The easiest option is to just put the cs69 in the middle and put the stock texmex neck back in.

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Re: Fender pickups polarity

ok.. sorted it all out.. 100%

the previous neck pickup definitely was rwrp. so i moved the cs69 to the middle with the leads flipped (same as i had it before in the neck). black to the switch and white to the back of the tone pot. i know that this was 100% in phase when this pickup was in the neck.
i put back in the original tex mex neck pickup, which is rwrp and just wired it like it was from the factory. black to the s1 and white to the switch. i will eventually replace this with a different rwrp pickup.

i now have hum cancellation in 2 and 4 and everything is in phase.
 
Re: Fender pickups polarity

i don't do this enough to have the need for a special magnet. i can flip the pickups over on each other prior to mounting to be sure.
 
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