north/south Polarity - top coming/top going ? help with Fralin Blues Special Tele Pup

[rickc007]

Having trouble matching a Fralin Blues Special Bridge pup with neck pickup on a Telecaster

The Tele is a Fender Time Machine with "nocaster" pups

I put the Fralin in and the mid switch is way too nasal
not the normal nasal, I mean unusable

I read the Duncan Antiquites are neck/north , bridge/south
neck "top going" / bridge "top coming"

whater that means

it that the way they are supposed to be ?
Does anyone know what a Fralin Blues Special is ?
or if they play well together ?

any opinions welcome

or any other neck pups that play well with the Fralin
want to keep the Fralin

 

[Butch Snyder]

Re: north/south Polarity - top coming/top going ? help with Fralin Blues Special Tele

Maybe they're out of phase with each other? A lot of pickup manufacturers don't match polarities with each other. I would try reversing the wires on the neck pickup. Why the neck pickup? If you desire to reverse the wires on the bridge pickup, you need to clip the jumper going to the baseplate. Reversing the neck pickup's wires negates that.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: north/south Polarity - top coming/top going ? help with Fralin Blues Special Tele

This is one of those headaches with mismatching brands, because I think Fralin is opposite Duncan. Usually, reversing the leads on one of them will cure the phase issue, but then it doesn't cancel the hum in that position. On humbuckers, the cure is to turn the magnet around on one, but you can't do that with singles, so you have to make sure they jive first.

One way to tell if they'll jive is to hold the faces of each pickup up to each other. If they attract, the phase will be fine. If they repel, you'll have the nasal honk tone.

If you can't sort it out by reversing leads, you may need to replace the bridge with something that jives with the Blues Special.

Antiquity 1's and II's are opposite, so one of them is bound to work. I just don't know which one for sure.

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: north/south Polarity - top coming/top going ? help with Fralin Blues Special Tele

They can be brought in phase with each other just by reversing the leads, the only question is whether they'll cancel hum in the middle position. If they're both North or both South, you won't be able to have them in phase and hum-cancelling, you'll have to choose one or the other.

You can reverse the lead on the Tele bridge too. The plate ground jumper isn't a problem, just switch the jumper over to what is now the new ground lead.