Pickup order in series wiring

[lamed]

Hi,

Out of my frustration about not daring to buy a Jazzmaster behind my wife's back to create my dual channel jazzbucker, I began some mods on my ols Epiphone ep-270. I managed to reverse the neck's pickup magnet and creating a real 'start of coil' pole (the wire was grounded to the pickup base) without broking anything (which is close to a miracle), so I'm of to add a series wiring options.

I'm wondering if the pickup order has some effect on the sound in this configuration.

To be more clear : the guitar has two single coils, which are rather far from one another (neck and bridge).

Assuming that the pickups are wired correctly to be in phase and hum canceling, will these two wiring sound different :

ground -> coil 1 -> coil 2 -> hot

ground -> coil 2 -> coil 1 -> hot

My guess would be that this reverses the phase of the whole circuit, which would be more or less like applying a (x -> -x) function to the signal, and would not result in any difference for the human ear.

Am I right or not? If not, could someone try to explain me why the two winrings would not sound the same?

[JohnH]

Hi lamed,

If it is a simple wiring of two coils in series, and if they are in-phase, then it makes no difference tonally which coil is to ground and which to hot. There are proper theorems about that! (exception, if one pickup was shielded and the other not like a lipstick and an open coil, then possibly less noise if the shielded one is on the hot side)

Also, if in considering those two options, the whole shebang is reversed in phase, and with no other pickups involved, it will also sound the same.
(exception, in cases on high feedback from the amp, it may make a change)

[lamed]

Thanks. Question answered