Quack

Frogster

New member
Was having a discussion with a buddy over the weekend and he had these questions.....thought I'd post to the gurus on this site. The "quack" sound from a Strat is using positions 2 and 4 (bridge and middle, middle and neck, with reverse winding on middle pickup), right? Is this because of the pickup combination being out of phase? Because the two coils of a humbucker are reverse-wound are they out-of-phase....if so, why don't they have this sound? (or did I have too many beers?)
 
Re: Quack

the middle pup of a strat is not out of phase. to get humcancelling the middle pup is out of phase twice, reverse wound and reverse polarity.

the quack comes from two pups being parallel, in phase. a bucker is typically wired in series which gives the fatter tone.
 
Re: Quack

Jeremy's right. I'll add that the quack is just the sum or net of the frequencies you get combining those two portions of the string in one signal.

When you have your Strat in the 2 and 4 positions, you are in every sense of the word playing a humbucker pickup (although usually in parallel) -- it's just that the two coils are a couple of inches apart instead of crammed up next to each other.

The coils of what we think of as a humbucker are, as Jeremy put it, "out of phase twice". Each coil's current travels in the opposite direction of the other, but each coil also gets the opposite pole of the magnet, so the signal is in phase. In other words, each coil of a humbucker is RWRP relative to the other, which gives us hum canceling without an out of phase signal.
 
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