LP PICK UP WIRING

[glynnk]

Hi I am looking for a LP wiring diagram for the pickups to be out of Phase on the middle part of the switch. Just the same as Mark Knopfler uses for the Brothers in Arms song. ;D ;D

[wolf]

Okay glynnk I'll try to answer your question.

First, here's a diagram:

If you have humbuckers on your guitar like photo A, then I'd say it might be possible to put the hubuckers out of phase.
However, if you have humbuckers like photo B, then the odds are quite high that you won't be able to do that.
The way to put humbuckers out of phase with each other (see diagram C) is to reverse the connections of one of the pickups.
Let's take the neck humbucker. If we were to reverse the leads going from + and - by connecting those to - and +, the pickups will be out of phase.
Here's why humbuckers like photo B create problems.
Those humbuckers have their ground wire (or 'minus wire') attached to the metal cover. So, when you reverse the leads, what was the ground connection is now connected to the 'hot' connection. Basically, if you were to touch the neck pickup with its leads reversed, it would produce hum such as that produced when you have a guitar cable plugged into an amp and you touch the 'hot' end.
To make matters worse, the strings are grounded and whenever a string hit the metal cover (which is now "hot") it will produce a dead short.

Sometimes, it is possible to remove the metal cover from the ground connection. I know my Gibson SG Standard had humbucking pickups that were "sealed for eternity" and it was totally impossible to take those apart.

[newey]

Well before Mark Knopfler, there was The Peter Green mod.

As wolf noted, if you have a "modern" humbucker this is easily done, by simply swapping the wires. If you have a vintage HB with just a single wire plus the shield, it's problematic. The Peter Green mod solves this problem by flipping the magnets, instead of swapping the wires.

Doing either procedure (flipping magnets or swapping wires) on one pickup puts the 2 pickups out of phase when selected together. Doing both procedures to one pickup, or doing one procedure to both pickups, puts the 2 back in phase again, and undoes your intended mod.

Whether flipping the one pickup physically around also changes the tone or not remains, as noted in the other thread, an untested proposition.

[JohnH]

So it boils down to; How many wires come out of your humbuckers, either a single within a braided shield, or 4 coloured wires probably with a bare wire/screen. Also, are you looking for a switched phase reverse, or do you want to have it permanently reversed?

John