What does a humbucker...

It’s not exactly the same, but my Les Paul is wired up like the Jimmy Page #1 guitars came from the factory (i.e. out of phase with a coil split on the bridge). In the middle position with the bridge split, you can get almost an acoustic sound by manipulating the volume controls. Pretty cool!
 
One coil of a humbucker out of phase with the other coil of that HB is a nasty, shrill sound. That's because the amount of signal cancellation is extreme because the two coils are so close to each other.

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If you are talking phase switching, all of the above apply.

If you are talking a shift, that would mean 1t4 or 1/2 out of phase. I believe, from what I read on the old Duncan wiring diagram of the Jerry Donahue Tele wiring. There one position placed one of the Tele pickups partially out of phase. I think the result was to get more of a strat bridge/middle tone from a Tele middle position.

The diagram used to be on the old tips page, pre site update.
 
One coil of a humbucker out of phase with the other coil of that HB is a nasty, shrill sound. That's because the amount of signal cancellation is extreme because the two coils are so close to each other.

+1 on this... if memory serves me, the Variax Workbench software mimics this phenomenon: if two virtual pickups of a same model are stacked OOP strictly at the same virtual place in a Line6 Variax modeling guitar, there's no sound at all. :-P

Now and regarding parallel wiring: it typically lowers the output level of 3dB or so.

So, yes, the combination of parallel and OOP wirings with two adjacent coils should make it sound nasty, shrill, thin, weak, unless a cap would cut the bass of one coil only, putting it half OOP with the other, as said above by our fellow members.

But a humbucker with its coils OOP wouldn't buck the hum no more...

That's not an idea that I'd dig. YMMV.
 
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