telecaster polarity dilemma

[nekkio99]

hi there, I am a newbie and are terribly confused about changing the pickups of my amercan standard telecaster :eyecrazy:, which I am going to make similar to a nashville telecaster (3 pickups). This is the scenario:

bridge: stock fender pickup
middle: seymour duncan ASP-2
neck: seymour duncan SSL-2

What really confuses me is: do I need to get a RW/RP pickup for the middle position? I think I do - to get hum cancelling. But would I get problems in combining that RW/RP middle pickup with the stock fender bridge pickup? (I am confused because seyomur duncan says their pickups are already the opposite of fenders, so by getting a RW/RP seymour duncan to match a fender wouldn't I make them the same polarity and therefore loose the hum cancelling effect?)

And if I do, can I solve them in any way with the way I wire the pickups?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

cheers guys and sorry for my ignorance!

andrea

 

[Artie]

Re: telecaster polarity dilemma

Hi Andrea; Welcome to the forum. There's actually two different issues here. Hum-cancelling and phase. They're related, but different. To keep this simple, lets consider just the two Duncans for a moment. You definitely want one of them to be rw/rp. The question is, which one?

To be hum-cancelling, you want the wind direction of the two coils to be opposite. THat way, you can connect them out-of-phase with each other, and the noise thats picked up out of the air cancels out. But you want the signal to be in-phase, so you flip the magnet on one. Now, the signal generated within is out-of-phase also. Since you connected it OOP, its back in phase.

(Edit: Just to be clear, you don't have to connect them backwards or flip the magnet. Thats already done at the factory. Thus, rw/rp.)

So, an rw/rp pickup will be hum-cancelling and in-phase with a non-rw/rp pup . . . of the same wind direction.

Here's the tricky part. Generally, a stock Fender pup will be out-of-phase with a Duncan. But what I don't know, is if its because the wind direction is reversed, the magnet is flipped, or the wires are just connected backwards. Any one of those three will cause the pup to be out-of-phase.

So . . . here's what you do. You connect the Fender and the rw/rp Duncan. Lets say you put them in the bridge and middle. Now put your 5-way in the "notch" position so that they're both on. If they're out-of-phase with each other, reverse the wires of the Fender. Now they're in-phase. But listen to see if they're hum-cancelling. If they are - no problem. If they aren't, then the non-rw/rp pup is the one that will be hum-cancelling.

The "problem" is, you're getting two different Duncans for the neck and middle. If you were getting both SSL-2's or APS-2's, you could just swap which one goes where. Hopefully, someone who has already done this can tell you which Duncan, rw/rp or non-rw/rp will hum-cancel with the Fender.

I don't know. :kabong:

 

[nekkio99]

Re: telecaster polarity dilemma

Thanks a lot ArtieToo! I did think that if I got either two SSLs or APSs I would have bypassed the problem. But if I can I would still get one of each. Still, great help, thanks so much, much appreciated. At least know I know what I need to find out, and once I do I'll be sorted!

Anyone else you may step in and le tme know which seymour duncan (rw/rp or non-rw/rp) will hum-cancel with the Fender stock pickup?

cheers