Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

[kylewrt1986]

Well, I'm a newbie to the forum and to pickup mods, so be gentle! :fingersx: I've been doing a lot of research, but finding some conflicting information. Ill try and lay it out as simply as I can (else ill end up confusing myself, more than anyone else lol)

- Im looking at 3 single coil set up
- I want to throw in some series/phasing (i've got all the scematics and the on/on/on switches neccessary etc..in theory i've got it licked..)
- Some sources seem to say you can't wire certain single coils in series, or swap the phasing by swapping the wires, as it causes the agnet to be ungrounded and thus hot, and therefor causing lots of noise

So, any of you guys who've already got single coils in series, or phase selection, or both, could you let me know which ones work ok and which ones, if any, don't? A summary of the ones im particularly bothered about:

- Dimarzio Virtual Vintage + other SCs...their tech support say any mods are fine
- Seymour Duncan APS-2, SSL-3/5/6...one tech support email said yay, one said ney
- Fender Hot Noiseless/Texas Specials

And any others you can suggest! As you can probably gather, its not all for one guitar, ive got a few ideas for sounds and im just seeing what becomes availible first! Thanks for taking the time to read this, and any help you can offer will be met with oodles of gratitude!:bowdown:

Kyle

 

[kylewrt1986]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

Any thoughts? I emailed Deaf Eddie and he reckons most single coils should be ok as long as the baseplate isnt conductive, and especially as long as the base plate isnt conductive + the pickgaurd isnt shielded (short circuit -> no pup outpup)

So maybe refining the question...do any of the affore mentioned pups have conductive base plates? Especially worried about the seymour duncan single coils, as their tech support didnt seem hopeful first time i emailed asking something similar.

Any help id really appreciate,

Kyle

 

[octavedoctor]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

Can we lay one issue to rest and that's this issue of phasing.

I know the term out-of-phase is common currency but it's actually fairly meaningless and misleading.

Phase refers to the angular relationship between two waveforms or objects in harmonic motion.

What you are thinking of is polarity.

Pickups of unlike magnetic polarity can be wired in series to produce a high output combination which also suppresses any induced noise, such as hum.

This works because signals induced in the coil by external events such as electromagnetic radiation are closely in phase while signals induced by disturbances in the magnetic core caused by a vibrating steel string have a phase relationship close to 180 degrees.

This is why the term phase is misleading; any pair of coils will have a range of signals some of which will be "in phase" some "out of phase".

Polarity however, has only two options.

If you have two single coils with opposed magnetic polarities they can be connected so that the the relative electrical polarity - this is the direction of any signal induced via the magnetic core - is the same and, by inference, the absolute electrical polarity - which determines the relative phase of any induced noise signal - is opposed. It is then possible to link the two together so that the signal induced by the string adds together to produce a high amplitude signal while the noise component cancels out.

In terms of the pickups you list;

There is little point in linking stacked humbuckers such as the Virtual Vintage and Fender noiseless. These are already noise suppressing so you won't achieve any improved performance. You may even find that they sound worse because the two humbuckers in series while act as a choke on high frequency components of the signal.

Texas specials work well as does any conventional single coil with a reverse wound/reverse polarity partner. This includes the APS-2 and the SSLs.

I have a Strat with a Superswitch wired so that it's a conventional strat in every position but the bridge where I have the middle and bridge in series. The pickups are Kent Armstrong "Kent Specials"

 

[kylewrt1986]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

Thanks for the reply!
I don't like to sound ungrateful, I do thank you for your time in replying, but I do understand the difference between polarity and 'phasing'; I guess you're just used to people saying their pickups are incompatible because they are out of phase, when the cause of the problem is the fact that the magnets are of opposite polarity. And when positon 2 & 4 are desribed as out of phase, which i understand isnt a helpful description; the quacky sound is experienced because the waveforms have slight differences in phase, the aren't actually out of phase.

Surely in general when the term out of phase (when used to describe the phenonemon which occurs when 2 pickups give a thin, weedy, weak sound) what is genrally meant is that the induced signal from the string vibration is out of phase by approximatly pi, so the pickups produce a signal whereby the peak from one pickup is directly above a trough of the other pickup...because physics is never perfect, and the pickups dont exist in the same position, the peaks and troughs don't perfectly cancel each other out, so you do get some sound, and these sounds are the discrete and exact differences between the pickups, and no 'common' signal...


My unsurities lie with whether or not swapping the hot and ground wires is a plausable modifcation, either for allowing two pickups of different polarity to be wired together, or just for general tone experiments; 'phasing' mods basically swap the hot and ground wires; that doesn't change the polarity of the magnet, but alters the signal in a way which compensates for the opposite polarity of the magnets. I'm not necessarily after humbucking, I realise that if I mix and match pickups that have different polarity, choosing one with RWRP may actually mean ill have 2 pickups of the same polarity but just opposite wind direction, which won't humbuck, they'll just be out of phase.( Or again, maybe it's more proper to call it a phase difference of approximatly (accounting for the fact they dont exist in exactly the same place) pi with respect to the induced signal.)

I was asking about series and 'phasing' because I want to experiment with tone, like with Brian May and his series/phasing wiring, though im not neccessarily wanting to synthesise his sounds; im just interested in obtaining sounds which aren't standard on stocks.

I hear what you say with the fender noiseless and other stacked humbuckers, Ill probably steer clear of wiring them in series, if its just going to give me a muddy tone, I guess I wasn't thinking of them as humbuckers, but of course they are! Thanks for alerting me to that one.

I'm glad to hear the texas specials and the SD singles work well with the mods, i'll go ahead with series wiring these, and maybe (trying to watch my language here) swap the hot/ground wires of one out of 2 to give a more interesting tone when theyre wired in series (i realise its a pretty useless sound for parallel, but for series, well, Brian May's done alright out of it..)

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, I'm sorry if my apparently misunderstanding (or maybe i still am misunderstanding, and now im just being infuriating) of phasing annoyed you, I did a physics A level and have done Quantum Physics in my degree so I get the gist of waveforms etc... I just called the hot/ground swapping mod a phasing mod, because thats what it seems to be called everywhere else!

Kyle

 

[kylewrt1986]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

Just a bit extra from what I said last night, just if anyone's interested or wants to debate (sorry, I just like talking science lol)

When 2 pickups have opposite polarity but the same winding direction (e.g mixing a seymour duncan pup with a fender pup, this is apparently commonly the case) then the 'out of phase' problem is experienced. This is because it causes the signal induced by the string to be out of phase by pi (radians..so 180 degrees)

however, when you mix 2 pickups (from the same manufacturer) you can get RWRP - the magnets are thus opposite polarity, but the signal induced by the vibration is still in phase - this is because the reverse winding pattern again shifts the phase by pi - thus the total phase shift is 2*pi (360 degrees) which is equivalent to a phase shift of 0, so the signal waves align, and thus no 'out of phase' problem is experience. However, the interference hum noise is gone; this is because the interference waveforms are out of phase by pi; because interference attacks at all angles, its waveform is not affected by the polarity of the magnet; it is dependant only upon the coil winding. Thus having the two coils opposing each other causes the noise waves to be out of phase (and as stated before, causes a phase shift of pi with the string vibration signal, but this shift is added to the pi shift caused by the polarity difference of the magnets)

Sorry to be a bore, but if this is right then maybe it'll help people understand the reasoning behind 'out of phase', and why RWRP works. If i'm wrong then I guess I should go back to school...lol

 

[octavedoctor]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

Just a bit extra from what I said last night, just if anyone's interested or wants to debate (sorry, I just like talking science lol)

When 2 pickups have opposite polarity but the same winding direction (e.g mixing a seymour duncan pup with a fender pup, this is apparently commonly the case) then the 'out of phase' problem is experienced. This is because it causes the signal induced by the string to be out of phase by pi (radians..so 180 degrees)

however, when you mix 2 pickups (from the same manufacturer) you can get RWRP - the magnets are thus opposite polarity, but the signal induced by the vibration is still in phase - this is because the reverse winding pattern again shifts the phase by pi - thus the total phase shift is 2*pi (360 degrees) which is equivalent to a phase shift of 0, so the signal waves align, and thus no 'out of phase' problem is experience. However, the interference hum noise is gone; this is because the interference waveforms are out of phase by pi; because interference attacks at all angles, its waveform is not affected by the polarity of the magnet; it is dependant only upon the coil winding. Thus having the two coils opposing each other causes the noise waves to be out of phase (and as stated before, causes a phase shift of pi with the string vibration signal, but this shift is added to the pi shift caused by the polarity difference of the magnets)

Sorry to be a bore, but if this is right then maybe it'll help people understand the reasoning behind 'out of phase', and why RWRP works. If i'm wrong then I guess I should go back to school...lol

No you are absolutely correct and obviously understand the subject very well. The term out-of-phase is not one i favour since any phase shift between 0 and 2pi radians is technically "out of phase". Phase is irrelevant for another reason though: many interference signals are spike waveforms with an uneven mark/space ratio and +ve or-ve bias off the x-axis. a phase shift of pi doesn't achieve noise cancellation for these waveforms, they need to be relatively inverted which is what rw/rp does.

I normally shy clear of making my explanations quite so mathematical as this gets me comments like "Whoa dude! Can we get that in english please!"

Sorry if i came across as patronising but i am used to having to explain this five or six times a week to people who don't understand the difference.

However, vis-a-vis the options for single coil series "phasing" there are only eight

1) two identical pickups in series - hot but noisy
2) two identical pickups in series but polarity reversed - noiseless but quiet and tinny as a result of the cancellation of the fundamental and major harmonics
3) pickups of opposed polarity and in series with synchronised polarity - hot and noiseless
4) pickups of opposed polarity and in series with reversed polarity - noisy and quiet and tinny as a result of the cancellation of the fundamental and major harmonics
5 through 8) As above but connected in parallel.

Realistically only 2 and 3 are of any potential use as 4 is useless because of the high s/n ratio and 1 is the same as 3 but with noise...

As options 5 through 8 have a similar breakdown it means you really only have four options in total and two series options.

The other thing is, a pickup doesn't have to be rw to be connected rp, there are just technical reasons why rw works better.

 

[kylewrt1986]

Re: Some help with Series/Phasing? Which pickups work?

No worries, you weren't patronising, I guess I was just embarassed at coming across like I didn't know what I was talking about! Probably because I didn't define what I meant when I said 'which pickups work...' I see now what that immediatly suggests!

My original problem was that I'd read in a few sources that swapping the hot and ground wires (or series wiring) on single coil pups can cause extraneous noise, because the magnets can sometimes be wired hot. According to Deaf Eddie (when i emailed him), this actually isnt a problem on most strat pups...its more a problem on single coils which have metal baseplates/covers, like telecaster pups. I think this is probably the source of my confusion..I was probably reading about a problem which affected tele pups more than strat pups.

And just to think, I used to hate physics! I see what you mean with the rw and interference signal, it isn't exactly correct to call it a phase shift as the interference signal is just a big uneven mess...the reversed winding basically 'mirror images' the mess and causes it to cancel out..If only i'd known all this stuff in my A level practicals lol.

Thank you for your time and effort in discussing this with me, It would have been very easy for you to have ignored my post and not bothered to help, so I am again very grateful. And it's nice to talk a bit of science with someone and not get called a sadcase...lol.

I'll look forward to another discussion the future perhaps!

Kyle