Peter Green Mod

[ijustwannastrat]

Since I used the handy "search" tool and could not find a thread involving it, I thought I would start one.

I love his tones, and when I saw this mod, I instantly started searching ebay for cheap humbuckers.

The idea of this mod is that you take the magnet out of the humbucker, flip it over so the polarity is opposite of the original, replace, and put the humbucker in flipped around. I don't see how flipping the humbucker around could affect tone, put I get switching polarity.

Supposedly, this method gives a better quality sound than just switching the Hot Lead and the Ground Lead. It's not toggle-able, but if you don't use the middle position on a dual HB guitar, what's the problem?

If anybody has done this, please share some info. I'm looking for matching pups on ebay so I can put them in my Blackjack ATX (mahogany body + neck, glued in neck). Not something permanent, just so I'm prepared for my next guitar build.

[ashcatlt]

I can't see how this is not completely meaningless unless there is coil splitting going on.

There are those who claim that they can tell the difference when the speaker moves out rather than in on an initial transient. I suspect most of these folks are deluded. I bet even fewer could tell whether this was due to flipping the magnet rather than reversing the wires.

[JohnH]

The PG mod is a way of reversing the ouput phase of the whole pickup, for use when combined with the other pickup. It works with no wiring changes, and also, it works with traditional wiring of single centre core and outer grounded braid. Any other way of reversing needs seperate coil connections, or compromise of the shielding.

My LP studio came like that for no good reason, along with other wiring errors, by a previous 'tech' . I rewired it all back again but I kept the flipped magnet, compensating with the coil connections to get back in phase. It meant that I could get the two adjustable coils as different polarity, which helped my combinations.

I think these days, its much better to get your phase reversal, if you want such, by configuring the wires of a 4 conductor Hb.

John

[ijustwannastrat]

So what you're saying, john, is that there is no difference between wiring a pickup out of phase with another, and reversing the magnet so that it's out of phase with the other pickup? I did not think there would be, but I'd like to be able to test it out, to make sure there's not some voodoo going on...

[JohnH]

Id say that is correct. But it would be interesting gto hear an anti-voodoo test of it. Its quite hard to set up though, since it would need two sessions of identical playing and recording of a single guitar, with some major wiring and pickup surgery in between. I prefer to just believe that there is no good reason why there should be a difference, and certainly no reason why one method of phase reversal should actually sound better than the other.

John

[sumgai]

The voodoo here can be found in what John said early on: "It works with no wiring changes."

The reason the tone is different is that the sensing coil (the one with screws) is now in the physical position formerly occupied by the slug coil. As you should recall, a string has harmonics out the gazoo all along its length, but at each point, the relation between all those harmonics is slighly different. (Not to mention between them and the fundamental itself.) In this new position, the different-sounding harmonics are what you can hear, and even though it's a short distance along the string, there is still a difference.... that's what gets your attention.

Until you combine both pups at once, then the differences are not quite so easy to spot.

Now for the magnet question. If what John says is true, about the "no wiring changes", then it stands to reason that merely rotating a pickup 180° in its cavity should not disturb the relation between the electrical wiring and the magnetic field structure. They haven't changed at all, right? All we've done is locate the sensing coil under a different point of the string, right? Then what happens if you flip the magnet? Well, the first thing that I think of is that if you don't swap the wiring around along with that flipping, then you've just created a humbooster, not a humbucker!

I suspect that when someone first performed this mod, he either failed to record his actions correctly, or else he used ambiguous terms that were later misinterpreted. I'd be inclined to try this without doing anything to the magnets at all. If it sounded good, I'd leave it alone, and go play! ;D

HTH




sumgai

[JohnH]

Sumgai - What I understood the PG mod to be, was to open up the pickup, pull out the bar magnet under it and spin it about its long axis so that the magnet poles under each coil are swapped, so what was the North coil is now South etc, but the physical positions of the coils stay the same. Both coils are still active as before, and humcancelling (which does not depend on the magnet), but beacuse the magnetic field on the pickup is now reversed, it reverses the phase of electrical output due to string vibration, hence causing out of phase combination with the other pickup.

J

[sumgai]

John,

I've never investigated the mod myself, so I'll take your word for it. However, it does seem simpler, a helluva lot simpler, to just reverse the wiring.... doesn't it seem so to you? I wonder if there was a physical impediment to that procedure, or was the magnet swapper simply in a "WTH, let's try this" mood that night? ;D

But that brings up another question/point..... what mod am I thinking of where the entire humbucker was rotated end-for-end?



sumgai

[ashcatlt]

Well, SG, that spinning the pickup thing is part of what I got out of the OP, along with the magnet flipping.

I can dig John's point about 2-wire HB's. If you happen to have one of these dreadful things that uses the shield braid as the signal return for the pickup, this could help avoid some noise issues. Course, if you're tearing the pickup apart anyway, you might could reverse the leads at this end.

What I want to know is why the heck you'd want to permanently turn your middle position into POoP?

[JohnH]

I found this link with some pictures:

Peter Green Mod

Here's another one:
Peter Green mod 2
Which in point 9, does indeed state that he also rotated the whole humbucker when putting it back. But it adds Mojo rather than Voodoo.

And one more:
Peter Green Mod 3

John

[ijustwannastrat]

I have two 2 humbucker guitars, and I never use the middle position, because I find it muddy, and lacking all the good traits that the bridge position gives, and all the good traits of the neck position. I figure, if I normally don't use it, what's the shame of making it POoP? I actually dig the tone, listening to clips of people who have done it.

[sumgai]

Oct 26, 2009 3:27:11 GMT -5 JohnH said:

..... does indeed state that he also rotated the whole humbucker when putting it back. But it adds Mojo rather than Voodoo.

Yeah, gotta love that Mojo!

[KIIMH]

sg - i notised yer knew tagline thingy aboot the bozone lair above yer avatar

bozone layer

The so-called "Bozone layer" is a thick, impenetrable shroud of bozone that surrounds all intelectually challenged people. When an bozone layer appears, it is hard to get rid of, and on the contrary it grows, blocking out all intelligent thoughts from reaching the victim. Though many tests have been performed, we have yet to discover a substance which creates bozone holes.

-Gee, he has a thick bozone layer!
-Huh...
-I wasn't talking to you.



... "Though many tests have been performed, we have yet to discover a substance which creates bozone holes.[/b]", eh? ...



leave it to GN2 to make yet another discovery! it's me ... it's always bin me!

klyel

[angelodp]

My SG had the PG on it and I undid it... pulled the magnet and spun it. LOL

[ijustwannastrat]

Why did you do undo that? Dislike the sound? Or simply like the normal sound better?