Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

[Pawelt]

Hi.

I've heard once that you shouldn't reverse black and white wires on single coil pickup. Sometimes it's needed if pickups doesn't sound in phase. But local pickups manufacturer told me that it can cause more hum and grounding problems if you just reverse black and white for some reason. So, does it really matters?

I want to put an Antiquity II Surfer into one of my guitars middle position (strat style with some custom pickups but not duncans or fender) and I don't really know if it will sound in phase in 2 and 4 positions. I know that RW/RP doesn't matter for that (only for hum cancelling) so I though that I will buy normal surfer (not bridge or RW/RP).

But I don't know if it's good to reverse wires on single coil if it won't be in phase with other coils?

Does that affect pickup tone in its own position or hum problems in that position?

 

[Ayrton]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

Dear god NO...

This will happen

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

Positive and negative poles are relative. This means you can use either in order to work with your wiring scheme. If you had a bad solder joint or if by reversing wires you made a position non-hum canceling, then sure you might get more noise. I suspect the advice you have gotten is from people who have a low opinion of DIY wiring and assume the worst, because they have had to fix it on customers guitars. So do your homework, take a deep breathe and say I can do this and I can do it right! People who dispense pessimistic advice usually have a vested interest in discouraging DIY repairs.

 

[Pawelt]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

So you are absolutely sure that I can reverse wires on Antiquity II surfer pickup? I got previous advice form someone who makes and sells a lot of hand made pickups here.

He said it can be more hum even in pickup's own position (middle in my case) if I reverse the wires.

 

[lotus eater]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

I'm not positive that the pickup will produce more hum when selected by itself... I am fairly sure that all you are doing by swapping the wires is sending the small a/c current that the strings produce to ground and output via a different wire. If you are worried, have the polarity of the magnets reversed. You'll change the phase of the two with that method as well. Good luck.

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

It won't produce more hum or give you radiation burns or heartbreak of psoriasis. The worst that happens reversing the leads of a Fender-style single is it's out of phase when you want it in phase, or vice versa, or maybe you have hum with 2 of the pickups together when you wanted hum-cancelling in that position.

Otherwise, reverse the leads with NO fear.

 

[octavedoctor]

Re: Is it good to reverse black and white wires on single coil pickups?

The question, as it is phrased, appears slightly ambiguous and my answer to it would be a qualified yes in one context and a no in another. This answer would also be conditional upon a number of other factors, such as the type of pickup. You would not, for example, simply swap the output polarity of a telecaster neck pickup without disconnecting the wire linking it to the screen and installing a separate feed wire for the screen to earth.

if the question relates to which end of the coil is better for the signal wire to be attached to then there is a definite improvement in noise limitation from connecting the ground wire to the open side of the coil and the signal wire to the "blind" side because in doing so you make the outer coils part of the earth path and the outer windings help to screen the inner windings. This also has the advantage that a foil screen can be used around the coil without the top end response being pulled down by the capacitance effect that occurs when the reverse configuration is used.

Also, as some others here have indicated, if you reverse the wires on the middle pickup of a matched set with a rw/rp middle pickup, you lose the noise cancellation in the intermediate stations and you get cancellation of the the fundamental and a lot of the mid range, so that's not a good idea. If you are doing this to take advantage of the noise suppression characteristics of the different configuration, then you need to do it on all pickups, not just one...

The Peter Green mod was not a simple reversal of output polarity by the way. The magnet in the pickup was inadvertently flipped during a routine rewind so that the normal relative polarity of the coils in each pickup was re-ordered. The neck pickup was also rotated through 180 degrees, restoring the polarity distribution but putting the "slug" coil where the screw coil should be and vice versa. The effect is very subtle indeed. Not a simple "out of phase" sound, but a subtle change in the harmonic phase cancellation.