James Burton's out of phase in between sounds on his Tele

I am no expert but I believe the early teles wired stock were:
Front= neck with cap. (dark)
Middle=neck with tone.
Rear=bridge with tone.
I think perhaps James put his switch halfway between Middle and Rear positions resulting in an "out of phase" thin sound.
I think all teles were originally wired that way until the mid-'60s

 

And as on a strat, not out of phase.

 

I used to do it and called it a "notched" position.

 

Later on I think James had a kind of early “stacked” or “dummy coil” lead pickup courtesy of Red Rhodes.

 

Phase is a perfectly relevant and correct word to use. There are different factors that determine which way up the signal comes out (which is why there are RWRP pickups) but you can look at the signal from each pickup simultaneously on an oscilloscope and you’ll see that they are slightly different but will very clearly be in phase (the large-scale movement goes up at the same time in both, down at the same time in both) or out of phase (when one is going up the other is going down). (Or in between if you mess about with capacitors, which is where “half out of phase” comes into the picture.)
Whether a 1950s-wired Tele had the pickups in-phase or not is an interesting question — as you say they weren’t expected to be heard at the same time. Winding will probably have been consistent because of the way the winding machines worked, but the magnet orientation may or may not have been controlled.
Good question for a Fender historian...

 

Leo wisely chose to use "make before break" switches so there wouldn't be a momentary silence when switching p'ups like there would be with "break before make" switches. So there was that little spot where you could "catch" two p'ups together. Being as how those pickups weren't originally meant to be on together it's possible they were wound out of phase, not intentionally, it's just how they came out, and maybe not all of them were. But by catching them together in that magic spot that's the sound that resulted. Later somebody, either at the factory or some players, discovered the cool in-phase sound and Fender started wiring them that way instead instead of the (dumb, IMO) forward "bass" position...besides, Leo was building actual bass guitars by that point and didn't want his Telecasters competing with them.

 

Are there any good recordings or YouTube vids of Burton with this sound? It might be worth a listen to see if it sounds like an in between sound or truly out of phase. My ear can usually tell after many years of pickup swaps, to me there is a huge difference sonically between the strat notch positions and truly out of phase pickups.

As others have said since the original pickups weren't intended to be used together there is a chance they would be out of phase. However knowing what I know about Leo and 50s Fender manufacturing and original strat pickups being all alike I would wager the Tele pickups were wound same direction and polarity to each other as well.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a listen with the good cans on when I get home later.

 

This sounds plausible to me. I could imagine (I'm guessing) that they didn't pay particular attention in the factory to phase, since the pickups weren't meant to be together.

The recording sounds pretty out of phase to me as well.

 

If it had something amiss from the factory but being on together wasn't intended in early wiring it wouldn't show itself in a QC run-through once assembled. It would be a cool coincidence that it ended up as his guitar though.

 

My guess is that it was a middle position-- both neck and bridge-- in phase, not out of phase. Two thin single coils wired out of phase would sound horribly nasal and thin and not really be good for anything.

Lots of people mistakenly call the 2 and 4 "quack" positions on a Strat "out of phase", but they are not out of phase. They are the two pickups in parallel, in phase. (If you wire one pickup backwards to yield out of phase you know it because it's a pretty un-useable sound when it comes to Fender single coils, IMO. In contrast, if you have some fairly beefy humbuckers then wiring them so they are out of phase when combined can yield a useful sound-- kind of single-coil-ish-- e.g. Peter Green's LP.

 

To me at least, that recording DOES sound pretty thin and nasal. Without hearing him playing each pickup by itself, it's harder to be sure, but that's my best guess.

It's also possible he turned the amp up louder to compensate for the drop in volume from being out of phase.

 

This. Ive swapped pickups in telly's and had them outta phase before and it sounded just like James on that recording. The Baja has this tone available in its switching.

 

I put a phase switch on one of my Teles - the 52RI - and I can attest that Burton's sound is absolutely positively out of phase. I also have a 4'way series switch and OOP it sounds a a bit thicker as expected but it's just as nasal. No mistaking that sound.

 

Umm, it doesn't sound out of phase to me. It sounds like the lead pickup is dramatically overpowering the other, hence the brightness.

In my opinion on a recording from that era if you had two pickups out of phase it would be so nasally and hollow there would be almost no tone left to be heard.

I don't want to deny those who have Bajas or other modern units with phasing options or get really deep in the weeds but the OOP sound seems really pickup dependent to me. Vintage winds OOP would not sound exactly like Twisted Tele pups OOP. The cocked wah effect moves with different pickups.