Mixing Fender and Seymour Duncan pickups - Bass

[McHale]

My bass has a Fender Precision 63 P-bass pickup at the neck. I purchased a Seymour Duncan SMB-4A for the bridge. Both wired passive - 2 volume, 1 tone. I spoke to support and they stated that if I wire per the SD diagram the pickups could have hum and be out of phase. So he had me switch the green and black wires and swap the red and white wires. Well, I got everything wired up and each pickup sounds amazing on their own but when I have the neck at full volume and bring in the bridge, they are clearly out of phase as the neck pickup basically disappears.

I'm also using the 3 way switch to give me series, parallel, and single coil modes on the SMB-4A.

To resolve the out of phase issue, do I undo the red/white swap, undo the green/black swap, or undo all of the wiring swapping.

I have attached the back of the box for the Fender pickup in case that helps...

Tnx

 

[McHale]

Attached are the wiring diagrams I used, only changes are that I swapped the green and black wires and the red and white wires.

 

[GuitarDoc]

You're using a 3-way switch for series/split/parallel? Or are you using the DPDT switch like in the diagram?

You've got the wires from the bridge pup going directly to the DPDT switch first and then to the vol pot like the second diagram shows?

And the bridge pup sounds out of phase with the neck pup when it is in both series and parallel?

If this is what you've got, then where the bridge pup is going into the DPDT switch, just switch the black and green wires.

 

[McHale]

I'm using a 3 way on/on/on switch exactly as shown in the 2nd diagram.

All wires are exactly as shown (with the exception of swapping the colors per the SD tech's advice). The question is, since you have a north start/finish and a south start/finish, if you only change the black and green (because I'm using a switch), won't that keep all 3 positions from working correctly as they are literally a pair of wires for each coil? So on the switch, black and red would have to stay on the same side of the switch and green and white would have to stay on the other side of the switch. When the pickup is wired normally, red/black and green/white are tied together. And in this diagram which is slightly different than SD's diagram, they are also kept together.

 

[GuitarDoc]

The red and white wires are the connection between the two coils. If the pup sounds out of phase you can reverse the wiring so black becomes ground and green becomes the hot wire, The two coils still remain connected by the red and white wires to keep it in series. When the DPDT switch put the pup in parallel, both red and black are hot and both green and white are ground in your diagram above. When the DPDT switch is in the middle position (split), the green, red, and white wires are all grounded and the black wire is hot making the black/white coil the only active coil. If you have reversed the wiring to green = hot and black = ground, then when the DPDT (on/on/on) is in the middle/split position then the red/green coil will be the active coil.

Think of the pup as being two separate pups...each coil as a separate pup. Either of those two coils can be active by itself or they can be joined together in series or parallel. If you change which coil wire is hot or ground, you put it out of phase.