vintage stack... does not appear to be "wired the same"

[mistermikev]

so had reached out directly to support a while back as I was awaiting delivery on a vintage stack set for a tele build. Wanted to cement in my wiring. I had asked specifically about polarity and phase and was told "like all other seymour pickups the vintage stack bridge is 'wired the same' as the neck".

well... got a set and did not get the results I was expecting. used an audio probe and multimeter and at every point I did not see an issue. Eventually figured "well I'm just going to take my trusty compass and...... wth?"
neck is south up and bridge is north up. When someone says "wired the same" I assume they mean both same polarity AND same phase.

So... just shot another email off to support to get them to tell me if this is right, or if someone pounded the poles in backwards. Figured in the meantime I could ask here.

For the record... not asking for wiring help. If this is indeed how they are mfg I can adjust my wiring accordingly however now I am doubting if they are indeed opposite PHASE as well.

 

[mistermikev]

the tele in question...

 

[mistermikev]

well for the record... I was right. Rep from seymour, to remain nameless, actually looked up our conversation and told me he had made a mistake. I appreciate that this gentleman didn't try to sidestep blame. Mistakes happen... I've even made a few myself lol. Unfortunately... this means I will have to flip the polarity of these magnets and reverse the wire colors should I want to make this wiring scheme work as intended.

Apparently... vintage stack is among a very small number of seymour pickups that have a bridge wired opposite to neck to allow for hum cancellation when split. So... hope that this info might help someone else who may wonder about this in the future.

 

[jeremy]

i dont know if thats uncommon, the middle pup of a strat stack set is rw/rp from the others for example, but its good to have confirmation of the configuration. thanks for sharing!

 

[mistermikev]

i dont know if thats uncommon, the middle pup of a strat stack set is rw/rp from the others for example, but its good to have confirmation of the configuration. thanks for sharing!

it is uncommon for a humbucker. vintage stack is a humbucker. all humbuckers would contain one rwrp pickup... but if you go look anywhere for seymour humbucker wire color you'll see they document it "one way"... and that is accurate for 99% of the humbuckers... but not vintage stack.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Strat middle is only RWRP if you order it that way.

 

[jeremy]

umm...

"The Classic Stack Plus neck pickup looks and sounds like a true Stratocaster single coil but none of the traditional single coil hum. It’s got all of the sparkle and the chime that you would expect from a vintage Strat pickup. Like its neck counterpart, the Classic Stack Plus middle pickup provides all of the classic Strat chime. However, we build it RWRP to give you that perfect in-between sound of positions 2 & 4 when split to keep the set completely hum-free in all selector positions."

 

[Mincer]

Do they make the Vintage Stack like that, too?

 

[mistermikev]

umm...

"The Classic Stack Plus neck pickup looks and sounds like a true Stratocaster single coil but none of the traditional single coil hum. It’s got all of the sparkle and the chime that you would expect from a vintage Strat pickup. Like its neck counterpart, the Classic Stack Plus middle pickup provides all of the classic Strat chime. However, we build it RWRP to give you that perfect in-between sound of positions 2 & 4 when split to keep the set completely hum-free in all selector positions."

RWRP is not enough information. what we're talking about is order of the coils in one humbucker relative to another... and the specific orientation of the top coil -since in a stacked orientation this is the only coil that will sound good by itself.

if you are just wiring up to split 1/3 coils... then the simple descrip above is enough... but does not tell me what I'd need to know to accomplish wiring below. I had suspected that the two groups of two coils would be wired different initially, and that is why I asked, and was shocked to have them tell me they were not.

if this was a reg humbucker... just flip the mag and rev the wires and problem solved... but at this point my options are: physically remove the poles and flip them... or pass them through a very strong magnet.

 

[Mincer]

And those poles aren't going to come out easily without braking the coil...

 

[mistermikev]

And those poles aren't going to come out easily without braking the coil...

right, that'd be a fools errand. got some 1/2 x 3/8 N52 mags and a c clamp. should be more than enough to fully charge them in reverse... but times like this would feel a lot better having a gauss meter.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

TBH I really don't see what the problem is.

The Tele Vintage Stack set really consists of two humbuckers.

The bridge (a Little 59 IIRC) is a small Tele sized humbucker, and the wires fitted to it comply with the regular SD convention.. That is to say black = north finish = hot, green = south finish = ground, white and red are the north and south starts, respectively, and normally get joined together to give both coils in series. You can, if you want, wire both coils in parallel and you'll still get hum canceling. You can, if you want, wire them for coil splits to either coil.

The neck has it's coils stacked. The two coils still hum cancel, but as mistermikev has said, only the coil nearest the magnets really contributes to the sound. As I have found personally with the Vintage Stack in my DIY Tele, the Vintage Stack is actually slightly louder coil split than coils in series, suggesting, to me at least, that the second coil actually slightly diminishes the output signal amplitude due to the extra 5k or so of ohms in the signal path.

SD has arranged the Vintage Stack coils and the overall polarity so that when coil split, the south coil remains active, giving hum canceling with the north coil of the bridge pickup. So just wire it up black hot, green ground, red and white joined together, and if you want to coil split, do it the usual way.

 

[mistermikev]

TBH I really don't see what the problem is.

The Tele Vintage Stack set really consists of two humbuckers.

The bridge (a Little 59 IIRC) is a small Tele sized humbucker, and the wires fitted to it comply with the regular SD convention.. That is to say black = north finish = hot, green = south finish = ground, white and red are the north and south starts, respectively, and normally get joined together to give both coils in series. You can, if you want, wire both coils in parallel and you'll still get hum canceling. You can, if you want, wire them for coil splits to either coil.

The neck has it's coils stacked. The two coils still hum cancel, but as mistermikev has said, only the coil nearest the magnets really contributes to the sound. As I have found personally with the Vintage Stack in my DIY Tele, the Vintage Stack is actually slightly louder coil split than coils in series, suggesting, to me at least, that the second coil actually slightly diminishes the output signal amplitude due to the extra 5k or so of ohms in the signal path.

SD has arranged the Vintage Stack coils and the overall polarity so that when coil split, the south coil remains active, giving hum canceling with the north coil of the bridge pickup. So just wire it up black hot, green ground, red and white joined together, and if you want to coil split, do it the usual way.

the wiring diagram is above - you can't read it and instantly know what I mean? hehe.

for the typical split/series/para setup - there is no issue.
I had tried to nail down details from sd support because to my specific wiring it DOES matter. Basically... wanted to have combos where I use the bridge top coil combined with the neck bottom coil (and visa versa) so that it will cancel different freq and yield a unique sound due to the separation between the top coil and the "dummy" coil. Since the top coil will dominate, you essentially get something like a partial split. My wiring allows you to access top-bridge+bottom-neck vs top-neck+bottom-bridge in para or series depending on the rotary "mode" via the 3-way toggle. As best I can explain it... that is what the problem is/was.

 

[Teleplayer]

Apparently... vintage stack is among a very small number of seymour pickups that have a bridge wired opposite to neck to allow for hum cancellation when split. So... hope that this info might help someone else who may wonder about this in the future.

Its not a small number, almost all modern sets include a RW/RP pickup. Normally people just install them "wired the same" and it never comes up as an issue. Most makers seem to adopt that mindset which generally works.

It only becomes an issue when people mix and match pickups from different sets and different manufacturers. Even then its mostly if they are doing some complex scheme where they intend to get hum-cancelling in coil split applications. For example the Stack plus STK-s4 pickups have different magnetic polarity for the middle pickup. In that case its actually a RW/RP pickup. The Seymour Duncan product info actually states this fact if you click on the "Details" tab on the page for STK-S4. However they also have swapped magnetic polarity, so its opposite from other strat pickups. That catches people out when they do a complex wiring scheme, and I recall Mincer also had that issue in his HSS Warmoth build from a few years ago. The most simple way to solve this would be for the product info to specify the magnetic polarisation of the pickups.

 

[mistermikev]

web dev/admins: hitting a lot of error 503 ... just want to paste my response that i had taken the time to type and then save off when you page timed out and wouldn't let me post... errrrg. is an issue with chrome as works ok in ff.

Its not a small number, almost all modern sets include a RW/RP pickup. Normally people just install them "wired the same" and it never comes up as an issue. Most makers seem to adopt that mindset which generally works.

It only becomes an issue when people mix and match pickups from different sets and different manufacturers. Even then its mostly if they are doing some complex scheme where they intend to get hum-cancelling in coil split applications. For example the Stack plus STK-s4 pickups have different magnetic polarity for the middle pickup. In that case its actually a RW/RP pickup even though the Seymour Duncan product info does not mention it. They also have swapped magnetic polarity, so its opposite from other strat pickups. That catches people out when they do a complex wiring scheme, and I recall Mincer also had that issue in his HSS Warmoth build from a few years ago. The most simple way to solve this would be for the product info to specify the magnetic polarisation of the pickups.

"almost all modern sets include a RW/RP" - i think you are might be conflating a rwrp single with an opposite wind/polarity humbucker. afaik, and i would love to know if I'm wrong on this... all standard seymour humbuckers are wired the same and according to the seymour wire color doc. ie... black north start, white north finish, etc - for neck AND bridge. it is only the stacked humbuckers that would have an element that is not wired in this order. i would love to know if the rails, lil jb, other single-sized-humbuckers are wired according to the stock doc or not. for the record... it would make more sense if they weren't. In fact... it'd make more sense if the std neck pickup was wired opposite. I have said before that it makes no sense to me that they would wire it such that the typical split wouldn't hum cancel. well aware that all one has to do is flip mag and reverse wires and this is easy for me but for simplicity's sake. i suspect the only reason to do it all the sm is ease of mfg.

"doing some complex scheme" - hehe see above.

"the most simple way to solve this" - you could not be more spot on with that comment. a lot of aggrivation would have been saved for me with just a simple diagram showing 1) what color wires go to top coil and 2) that the neck is south up instead of typical.

 

[Mincer]

web dev/admins: hitting a lot of error 503 ... just want to paste my response that i had taken the time to type and then save off when you page timed out and wouldn't let me post... errrrg. is an issue with chrome as works ok in ff..

SD is aware of that, and we hope it gets fixed soon. It seems to happen when editing, and uploading pics.

 

[mistermikev]

SD is aware of that, and we hope it gets fixed soon. It seems to happen when editing, and uploading pics.

right on. just thought if ya didn't know you'd probably want to know!

 

[Teleplayer]

"almost all modern sets include a RW/RP" - i think you are might be conflating a rwrp single with an opposite wind/polarity humbucker. afaik, and i would love to know if I'm wrong on this... all standard seymour humbuckers are wired the same and according to the seymour wire color doc. ie... black north start, white north finish, etc - for neck AND bridge. it is only the stacked humbuckers that would have an element that is not wired in this order. i would love to know if the rails, lil jb, other single-sized-humbuckers are wired according to the stock doc or not.

I was writing about standard single coils as well as the Duncan Stack plus. The issue is more relevant to true single coils, since people normally want them to cancel hum in the notch positions. I can answer your question about the rails pickups - Those are wired like a normal humbucker. The only difference is the north coil is always oriented towards the neck of the guitar.