1972 stratocaster pickup mystery..help me solve it

[raulsue]

ok here we go ... heres the back ground...i have a stock 1972 sunburst strat ..now the only part of this that didnt come with the guitar is the bridge pick up .. i ruined it years ago messing with the magnet height ...doH!...ok so i bought an other 1972 strat pick up... i took the new pick up to my tech who is a liecened fender repair ....goez instrument repai in st louis... he looked at the pick up verified by # code that she was all 1972....he looked at the pick up thouroughly and said its good never been rewound... so far so good....then he noticed something odd..the windings were wound in the oposite direction that my neck and middle pups...then he tested the magnet polarity and they were oppossite that of my origional 2 pups...he looked it all over again...and was stunned but not supprised... he worked for fender and he said that since thiss new pup may have come from a set that had the windings and polarity of the magnets opposite my other 2 pups... he said that the replacement pup when origionaly wound was wound and numbered matching set... so that set of 3 pups would have been fine.......but in fenders sloppyness that set or others may have been wound this way.....

so in effect i have a pup in the bridge position thats reverse wound and reverse polarity.... holy **** ! if this was tru then i could switch this pup and the middle pup and get them hum canceling in 2 and 4 position! just like the modern strats!..

i asked him ..bro is there any way you could be fooled and this is a rewind ...or a fake .. he said noway and showed me more evidence...
we then took the pup to 2 other techs and just posed this question ..has this pick up been rewound or tampered with... both the 2nd and 3rd opinion said no this is unmollested pup... we did not tell them any of the story.....
so there it is...... could 3 techs that rewind pup themselves and have pro shops all agree..........

1.has any one else heard or seen this phenom before?
2.if i sell this guitar its gonna be hard as hell to convince a buyer this is true..... he would have to be very sofisticated or stupid
3. could 3 repair tech be wrong?
4.could someone have been so good as to fool 3 techs?
5.could fender in 1972 been that sloppy and churned out a set with windings and polarity opposite than the norm of the time by mistake....could it have bee a new employee and say wound the first or second pup and realized **** im doing it backwards and then a more experienced employee said well finish the set and dont do that againg idiot.... of course that set would have gone unnoticed because they were matched....

any thoughts on this !!!! please!!!!!!!!!!

[TeleDrifter]

Good mystery....I've not a clue........Cheers

[aznrambo481]

I think you just blew my mind. Moral of the story: Strats have too many pickups?

[Shoved BassVIII]

I imagine its quite possible....

[tonfarbe]

Lefty Stratocaster?
Just thinking out loud...

[5965]

Just my opinion, without seeing the pickup and guitar and/or knowing more about their history:

Anybody can be fooled. Included in this list are, among others, anybody who wasn't working on the products when they were new and anybody that thinks they can't be fooled.

Without going into detail, modding guitars was far more prevalent on a percentage basis in the '70's than it is today. In many aftermarket and specialty shops, RW/RP's and their use were known, and it would have been cheaper to rewind/repolarize a unit than to replace it (even if one were on the market, and they weren't for a long time). The work could have been done any time since then.

That's assuming nobody actually wanted to fake the pickup (date codes, wire type, etc.). It's not hard, but the chief reason this is unlikely is that nobody was particularly interested in that year until recently, and even then it doesn't command a premium compared to other years.

Since two significant reverses are required, it's unlikely such a pickup was manufactured by mistake, and there'd be little reason for Fender to make one on purpose (knowing the benefits) and not market it (which they did not). The stock winding directions and magnet polarity specs did vary early on, but afaik, that pickup would have been from a period after that when the construction went largely unchanged for some time, apart from making the magnet heights uniform.

My guess is it's a unit that was modded a long time ago. The only person I know that might know in your area is Ed at Silver Strings Music, if he's still around.

But he'd have to see both in person.

[Scotland]

Originally Posted by tonfarbe

Lefty Stratocaster?
Just thinking out loud...

Good thinking, that might be the answer but I wouldn't swear by it.
Wow, just realised how constructive and helpful this reply is.

[5965]

Either could be made either way (and may have been at some point in time), but on the original Fenders I own, the only difference between lh/rh pickups is the magnet height/order. That is reversed because the string order is reversed on Fender's lh guitars.

Other than the magnet order, the pickups- including polarity, wiring, bobbins and terminals- are the same. But I don't own every Fender pickup, so, FWIW.

[raulsue]

well teleholic...i know ed ...i will bring the instrument to him as well and report back.......
as to what ed thinks as well...
im at 50/50 not shure.... i was 95 for it has been tampered with ...but when 3 decent guys with much much more exp than i exp all arrive at the same conclusion that its an anomaly... its left me at 50 /50 .....the guitar sounds killer and as it sits i get hum cancle in pos 4 cause the odd pup is in bridge........ if ed tell me its good then... ill move this pup to the middle position to get hum cancle in 2 and 4....
ty tele for bringing eds name back to me

[5965]

The way I see it, as long as it's a real '72, it's a 'no lose' scenario.

First, it sounds good in the guitar, and that's not a given. Second, if it's an original modified to rw/rp, then you've got what most people would want today. Third, if it ever becomes valuable to the point of wanting an original spec unit, it can be rewound and repolarized easily enough.