Why does my Tele sound like it's out of phase??

[ye olde fretmonkey]

Here's the deal.

My 50s had a Duncan Broadcaster bridge p'up in it. Lately it was sounding way out of balance from th neck p'up, thin, not much output. I figured I had finally sweated over it until it corroded and had a broken winding.

Looked around in my box of parts and found what I'm pretty sure is a 52 RI p'up. Pulled off the bridge, soldered up the leads, put it all back together. Pickup sounds goood, neck p'up too, but the middle pos sounds out of phase now. It's that weird hollow tone like a Strat 2nd pos "quack" setting, no bottom to it. At no point did I touch the switch or pots while doing this pickup transplant.

What the hell is going on with this? At the gig last night I could barely get a usable tone out of that middle pos, and that's where I usually leave it most of the night. Could there be something else at play here that made the Duncan sound weak and crappy to start with??

[mellecaster]

Not tryin to be a Smart A$$....but it most likely is....if that's all you changed...1st rule of troubleshooting...what's the last thing ya did ?

[tdowns]

Originally Posted by ye olde fretmonkey

Here's the deal.

My 50s had a Duncan Broadcaster bridge p'up in it. Lately it was sounding way out of balance from th neck p'up, thin, not much output. I figured I had finally sweated over it until it corroded and had a broken winding.

Looked around in my box of parts and found what I'm pretty sure is a 52 RI p'up. Pulled off the bridge, soldered up the leads, put it all back together. Pickup sounds goood, neck p'up too, but the middle pos sounds out of phase now. It's that weird hollow tone like a Strat 2nd pos "quack" setting, no bottom to it. At no point did I touch the switch or pots while doing this pickup transplant.

What the hell is going on with this? At the gig last night I could barely get a usable tone out of that middle pos, and that's where I usually leave it most of the night. Could there be something else at play here that made the Duncan sound weak and crappy to start with??

Does your new pickup have an independent plate ground so that you can reverse the polarity of it without doing surgery on the bridge to remove the ground plate connection? In any case, you will need to experimentally reverse the polarity of one of your pickups to verify they are out of phase. I hate it when that happens. Hook them up in reverse with clip leads first to save a desoldering cycle in case you need to go back.

The "out-of-phase" sound of 2 pickups is more relevant to the distance between them than most factors. For instance, Strat pickups are all wired in phase electrically, but the distance between them makes that quacky sound. Any two pickups mixed together will have phase cancellations (out-of-phase) at some frequencies.

[0le FUZZY]

...Sounds like yer neck P/U iss outta faze with yer lead now.

...Reverse the neck P/U leads first and check. If it sounds good then pull the neck P/U out and change the shield ground wire tew the udder lug.

...If it still sounds outta whack yew prolly haff reversed mag-a-nute polartity and yew kin check that by puttin the tew P/Us face tew face. It they push apart yer O.K. If they suck together yew haff a prollem yew kant fix cept by pullin all 6 slugs out and reversin them. Don't try this at home less yew dunn did it a few times.






I'm still urglee but still luv the TELECASTER (MySpace)


Please visit my page

[tdowns]

Thanks Fuzzy for mentioning the magnet polarity. If forgot to bring that up.

[boris bubbanov]

Mr. Duncan chose specifications from sometime in the 1950's Fenders for I think virtually all his SD pickups. Fender had adopted the opposite specs shortly thereafter and never looked back. So, basically any time you replace a Seymour Duncan with a Fender non-antique pup, or vice versa, if you weren't out of phase before you will be when you're done.
Do you have a AV52 neck pup you can match your toolbox pickup to?

And yeah I guess there could be some other thing still not right under the hood, under the control plate there.

I bought a '69 Thinline with a stock 50's vintage MIM pickup in the neck, and a Seymour Duncan Jerry Donahue in the bridge, and the combination is out of phase and not of much use (it will be changed), and that's what spurred my observations.


Bubbanov

[markinlondon]

The Duncan I put in my MIM strat was out of phase with the others when wired up according to Duncan's normal scheme. I'd try Fuzzy's tip first.

[hwestman]

Originally Posted by 0le FUZZY

...Sounds like yer neck P/U iss outta faze with yer lead now.

...Reverse the neck P/U leads first and check. If it sounds good then pull the neck P/U out and change the shield ground wire tew the udder lug.

...If it still sounds outta whack yew prolly haff reversed mag-a-nute polartity and yew kin check that by puttin the tew P/Us face tew face. It they push apart yer O.K. If they suck together yew haff a prollem yew kant fix cept by pullin all 6 slugs out and reversin them. Don't try this at home less yew dunn did it a few times.






I'm still urglee but still luv the TELECASTER (MySpace)


Please visit my page

Why should that be a problem? If the pickup is magnetically out of phase you should still be fine if you reverse the leads shouldn't you? If the pickup i magnetically AND electrically out of phase it should be IN phase AND hum cancelling in the middle position.

Or did I get something wrong?

[ye olde fretmonkey]

Originally Posted by boris bubbanov

Mr. Duncan chose specifications from sometime in the 1950's Fenders for I think virtually all his SD pickups. Fender had adopted the opposite specs shortly thereafter and never looked back. So, basically any time you replace a Seymour Duncan with a Fender non-antique pup, or vice versa, if you weren't out of phase before you will be when you're done.
Do you have a AV52 neck pup you can match your toolbox pickup to?

And yeah I guess there could be some other thing still not right under the hood, under the control plate there.

I bought a '69 Thinline with a stock 50's vintage MIM pickup in the neck, and a Seymour Duncan Jerry Donahue in the bridge, and the combination is out of phase and not of much use (it will be changed), and that's what spurred my observations.


Bubbanov

Oh, great. It couldn't just be as simple as pulling out the old one and hooking the new one up, yellow/yellow and black/black.

[tpaul]

Originally Posted by 0le FUZZY

...If they suck together yew haff a prollem yew kant fix cept by pullin all 6 slugs out and reversin them. Don't try this at home less yew dunn did it a few times.

Sounds like one of those skills you need to already be good at before trying for the first time...

[0le FUZZY]

Why should that be a problem? If the pickup is magnetically out of phase you should still be fine if you reverse the leads shouldn't you?

...Onlee thang I kin suggest is that yew try it first. Alst I kin say iss that it duz still haff an outta-faze sound even with the coil polarity correction.

...I kant splain why yew wood haff ta ask sumone like Terry Downs bout that.

...I jes noe I dunn did a bunch of P/U liss-nin on my test bench and it waz a different sound whence the mag-a-nutes dent match.









I'm still urglee but still luv the TELECASTER (MySpace)


Please visit my page

[Vizcaster]

If the magnets are reversed, then you can reverse the wire polarity on one of them until you find yourself with an in-phase sound musically that is actually hum-canceling.

[ye olde fretmonkey]

OK, this is exactly why I dislike tinkering with guitars.

My tech said he'd fix it for $35 and it's worth $35 of my time to have him do it instead of me.

[do not be afraid]

i'm 99% certain your tech is just going to do this:



it can be done to the neck pickup, too, in the same way. decide for yourself whether or not it's worth paying the $35!

while you're in there, you might think about adding in a switch so you can get both in phase and out of phase sounds! or maybe a series/parallel switch? or both? usually the biggest concern with doing those modifications is converting the pickup to a 3-wire, but, if you have to do it anyways, why not have some fun, too?

[sk8g0at]

i've never heard of someone's sweat messing up a pickup.
i guess it's possible, but it seems unlikely.

did you ever determine if the original pickup was bad? if you put an ohm meter across each of the wires it should read around 6k. if there was a broken wire you'd get no reading or your meter will zero out.

also, where did you unsolder the original pickup from? the pot/switch side or the pickup side? either way you can fix it by re-wiring the bridge pickup or switch the ground and hot wires of the neck pickup. then they will both be in phase with each other.

not saying you did, but it's a lot safer to disconnect the pickup at the switch and ground. leave the wires connected to the pickup. teles are nice to work on. you won't even have to take the strings off to reverse the neck pickup.

[do not be afraid]

oh, yeah, the original pickup: i'd get that looked at by a good pickup winder. the problem is almost certainly with the pickup — the "out of phase" sound your hearing now just seems like the normal "out of phase" sound you get when the pickups are, uh, out of phase (and which is what the modification i mentioned up there fixes), and wouldn't have anything to do with your original pickup's problem — but, there's no point in just tossing out a dead or dying pickup when you could easily get it fixed by any good pickup manufacturer!

[ye olde fretmonkey]

Originally Posted by sk8g0at

i've never heard of someone's sweat messing up a pickup.
i guess it's possible, but it seems unlikely.

It's absolutely possible. I've ruined more than one humbucker that way.

They just corrode.

[benbo]

Originally Posted by hwestman

Why should that be a problem? If the pickup is magnetically out of phase you should still be fine if you reverse the leads shouldn't you? If the pickup i magnetically AND electrically out of phase it should be IN phase AND hum cancelling in the middle position.

Or did I get something wrong?

You are correct, If I wind a set to be hum cancelling in the middle I have the bridge south polarity up and the neck north polarity up and reverse wound from the bridge, if they are opposite polarity and wound the same direction then yes you will get the thin tone out of phase thing, just reverse the wires and it will fix it, you may get buzz if you touch the magnets and in some cases the whole thing can short out dead temporarily if you touch a string to the manets of the one with switched wires, you should have no problems switching the wires around.

And yes as someone else said, Seymour does his PU's like the old days so his 9 out of 10 times will be reversed from the traditional stuff

Just as a side note, the black wire is usually the start of the wind and the white or yellow is the end of the wind. You can look at the blacks on each PU and if they are both on the same eyelet on each pickup as in the left one on both then they are wound the same direction and if the polarities are the same then they will work fine as well, just not cancel any hum.