Re: To modify or not to modify? (Fender FSR content)
OK, now I'm curious. How do you use an analogue meter to check phase?
Let's assume the pickups are in a guitar. Insert a spare jack plug into the output socket, with the plug's outer shell removed. Connect the red and black leads from the analogue meter to the two exposed terminals on the jack (if you don't have a spare jack, plug a lead into the guitar and unscrew the shell from whichever end is most convenient, to get access to the terminals). It helps if you have alligator clips to attach the meter leads so your hands will be free.
Set the meter to a resistance range (I can't remember which works best, a high or low range, but you can experiment to find out). Set all the guitar's controls to maximum. Select one pickup with the pickup selector switch. Tap the selected pickup and tap one of it's pole pieces with a small screwdriver. Watch the meter's needle very closely as you tap ... the needle will deflect slightly to one side or the other. If you feel the deflection is almost too small to see, try selecting another resistance range until you find the one that shows the best deflection. These deflections are only small, you need to watch the needle closely.
Make a note of which way the needle moved when you tapped the pickup. Now select another pickup and tap that one, again watching the needle closely. If it's in phase with the first one, the needle will deflect in the same direction. If it deflects in the other direction, the two pickups are out-of-phase with one another.
You can also check the pickups before you install them. Worst case scenario, you have 3 pickups (Strat, maybe ?) and they all have different coloured wires. You have no idea which is the hot wire for any of them. Randomly designate one wire for each pickup to be your hot wire and mark it with a piece of tape. Connect the meter's red lead to your designated hot wire on the first pickup (and obviously connect the meter's black lead to the other pickup wire), and do the tap with a screwdriver. Note which way the needle deflects and make a note of it. Do the same with the other two pickups (or other one if you are only working with two). Make a note of the direction of needle deflection for each pickup.
With two pickups, they will either both deflect in the same direction, meaning the way you have marked them is good, or one will deflect in the opposite direction to the other, in which case you would re-assign the 'hot' tag to the other wire on one of the pickups ... then test again (making sure to connect the meter's red lead to your new 'hot' pickup wire) and they should both deflect the needle in the same direction.
With three pickups, you might get lucky and all three will send the needle in the same direction when tapped with the screwdriver. Or two will deflect in one direction and one will send the needle the opposite way. Swap your 'hot lead' marker to the other wire on the 'odd man out' and run the test again (again, be sure that the meter's red lead is connected to whichever pickup wire you have designated as 'hot').. They should now all deflect the needle in the same direction.
Obviously if you have a pair of humbuckers with a single core, shielded cable from the pickup, you could have a problem, you'd have to swap the connections at the pickup end, where the cable attaches to the fine wires of the coil winding. If one pickup has single core shielded cable but the other one has two unshielded wires, check with a meter to see if either one is electrically connected to the pickups baseplate. If neither wire is, do the reassignment on this pickup. Test again to be certain they are in phase.
In the case of something like a Tele neck pickup, use the meter to find out which wire is also connected to the metal cover ... that one will have to be ground, and the other wire will be hot. Use that pickup as the reference and get the bridge pickup in phase with it. You'll then have to check that the bridge pickup hot wire is not the one that connects to the baseplate ... if it is, you'll need to reconnect the baseplate to the non-hot wire.
Most digital meters aren't as fast as the analogue needle and will most likely not show a reading, hence the use of the analogue meter. I must stress that the needle deflections are small and you must watch the meter closely ... but after a few taps on the poles, you will see it and it becomes easier.
You can Google this topic and get a bunch of variations on this theme, but what i've described above is how i do it and it always works fine.
We now return you to normal programming .....
