i'm out of phase for an unknown reason? please help

Your grounding point is not the issue.

Chances are your pickups are simply out of phase. Flip the black and yellow connections from the bridge pickup and all will be good. Don't flip the neck pickup's leads because the metal cover is also a shield; you need that wired in that manner to decrease noise.

 

Ah. You have a meter? Disconnect the bridge pickup's black wire and test across the black wire and the base plate. If there's no continuity, flipping the leads is no problem.

If there is continuity between the black wire and the base plate, you'll need to break the base plate's connection to the black wire and make the connection to the yellow wire.

 

If the earth is separate on the neck pickup you can swap the white and the black on the neck instead

 

I thought this was a Star Trek reference... sorry.

Carry on.

 

Is this a matched set of pickups ? maybe 1 is south and 1 is north

 

The typical Star Trek response to your problem is to re-modulate your shields.

 

Pickup makers do not agree on phase/ ground, so one brand will be out of phase (OOP) with another brand.
For example IIRC Duncan uses the earlier vintage Fender phase while Fender reversed phase in later years, so those brands don't match in a set.

 

That could be the problem a different polarity will give a weak out of phase sound a compass will give you a idea of the polarity
Try a standard wiring diagram

 

You can wire for a RWRP set or for a same polarity set.
But the wiring will be different, or the sound will be different if using the same wiring.
First thing to do is find out if one pickup is RWRP from the other pickup.
you can use a compass as noted by @netgear69 to see if both pickups have the same pole magnetism on top.
Or if you have another pickup on hand you can see if it sticks to both or repels from both, vs sticks to one and repels from the other, indicating one is RWRP of the other.

Once you determine what you have for pickups you can search for wiring diagrams for RWRP, or for same polarity sets.

Some of us want an RWRP because it hum cancels.

I don't have a solution to your problem because I don';t know if you wired wrong or what polarity your pickups are.
Note that unmatched sets may still be same polarity.
And some matched sets are reverse polarity.

You can wire an RWRP pickup for non reverse hookup, which pertains to RW or reverse wound, but it will still be RP or reverse polarity.

The third part of the recipe is which end of the coil you choose to ground.
If you reverse the hookup of one pickup, you also need to reverse which end of the winding you connect to ground.
Since you already ran the neck pickup cover ground wire separately, that will be easier to change then the bridge pickup which has the base plate ground soldered to one end of the coil winding.
Some players choose to run the base plate to the pot rather than directly to one of the coile ends on the pickup, so they can switch the wiring polarity of the bridge pickup.
More often though, a Tele neck pickup comes wired with the extra ground wire to the cover for switching wiring polarity.
There is no way to "switch" magnet polarity, but it can be reversed with a strong neodymium magnet.

 

You have run a separate ground for the neck pickup cover, so you can just reverse the other two leads.

 

The resistance of the coil is part of the matched vs not matched idea, but is not related to the RWRP aspect of matched or unmatched.

The OP said he ran a separate wire from the cover to a pot but didn't confirm whether or not the cover is connected to one or the other end of the coil at the pickup!
You may be correct but I'm not getting the sense that he understands the wiring he did.
From the diagram he referenced it could be that he means he grounded the wire from the end of the winding that is grounded to the cover, or saw that this grounded to the cover lead needed to connect to ground somewhere.
But if something like a Twisted Tele neck pickup with separate cover ground wire, he may be able to change polarity in the control cavity without removing the pickup.

We just don't have clear enough info!