? Lace Duallys vs.Humbuckers_Same Circuit Wiring?

[petros]

Are Lace Sensor Duallys and traditional humbuckers identical for wiring purposes? I can't find much info on this on the Internet. The Lace website lacks adequate design notes for their pickups. This question is a little perplexing for me given my level of understanding of guitar electronics, but hopefully it has a nice short answer. ;D

As per my other post, I have a set of Lace Duallys that I am going to be using in Wolf's Funky Five switching design ( www.1728.com/guitar5.htm ). This design requires having the "start" and "finish" ends of the wires from each coil of the humbucker exposed as with the four-wire type humbuckers to connect to a switch that allows for series/ parallel switching. The Dually has similar wiring only with a different color coded scheme.

I started thinking how a traditional humbucker works. "Since the two coils are of reversed polarity and reverse-wound and connected in series, noise and interference is significantly reduced via common-mode rejection" (from wikipedia, of all places).

So, you ready?

Q. 1--If the two single coils of a Dually are connected in series, but not reverse wound, this wouldn't affect their sound compared to humbuckers. It would affect their ability to cancel noise and interference, yes? If so, then the "start" and "finish" for each coil would be wired into a circuit the same for the Duallys as it would for a traditional four-wire humbucker.

Q. 2--If I'm wrong about Q. 1 above, and given a Lace Dually is not a true humbucker but is a set of two single coils that are identical, including how the coils are wound (again, you do not have the reverse polarity that is typical for humbuckers), I'm wondering if I am copying Wolf's wiring diagram that is intended for two traditional humbuckers, where the "start" and "finish" ends of each coil are supposed to be connected at the series/ parallel switches, is there some reason you need to switch the "start" and "finish" of one of the single coils from the pickup at the switch, or would that be switching the "phase" and not the "polarity?" Isn't the only way you change the polarity of the coil in respect to another coil is how you wind it?

Ultimately, I'm only asking this because I'm concerned that following Wolf's wiring diagram for "start" and "finish" connections without using a traditional humbucker is going to create something like an out-of-phase arrangement because of the design of the Dually. I'm trying to avoid a bad first impression of the sound of the Duallys by getting the wiring right the first time.

[petros]

From the original guitarnuts website:

"MYTH: Humbucking pickups have two coils which are "out-of-phase."
REALITY: That statement is at best misleading, at worst, incorrect. See the section on pickup theory for a complete treatment of this subject. In short, the two coils of a humbucker have opposite electrical and magnetic polarity so that, while the noise signal is out of phase, the primary signal is in-phase. "

Further confusion from the Stewart-MacDonald website:
"To achieve this cancellation in the traditional sense, the coils must have opposite magnetic polarity and are wired electrically out-of-phase."

Again, sounds like a lack of distinction being made between the terms "phase" and "polarity," but I digress from my question above.

[wolf]

To add even more confusion, the humbuckers coils are not reverse wound in relation to each other. Nope, not at all. That is to say if you think one coil is wound clockwise and the other counterclockwise, that is not the case. My webpage here explains this: www.1728.com/guitar1a.htm

To tell you the truth, with all the guitar wiring and electronics projects I have done, I really couldn't explain how humbuckers work.
From the wikipedia site you stated:
Since the two coils are of reversed polarity and reverse-wound and connected in series, noise and interference is significantly reduced via common-mode rejection
Well that explains it all doesn't it?
At least I know there are 2 mistakes in that sentence.
1) the coils are not reverse-wound.
2) being in series does not contribute to the humbucking. You can connect coils in parallel and (if wired correctly) they will be humbucking.
By the way, I do think wikipedia is a very good reference but maybe as Yogi Berra said "90 per cent of the time you can't believe half those things." LOL

[petros]

Allrighty.

The diagram on that link about humbuckers makes more sense to me. "...it is not necessary to have the coils physically wired in opposite directions. It is only necessary to wire them so that the electricity flows through the two coils in different directions." And ultimately that means the finish of one coil must be attached not to the start of the other coil but to the finish so that the electrical energy flows in the reverse direction.

So then, Wolf, I'm assuming I should just wire the circuit as per the same way a traditional humbucker would be, and hopefully the mother will sing with all the sweetness Lace pickups are supposed to have. [Edit: No, I later found this is wrong for Lace Sensors. When you go to the available wiring diagrams that Lace created for their Dually pickups you see in all cases the two coils are connected with the Finish of the first coil connected to the Start of the second coil, which means they are suggesting NOT to put the coils in the traditional reverse wound/reverse polarity configuration. If you connect the Finish of one coil to the Finish of the second coil it will radically change the sound of a Dually pickup.]

I found that the color coding for the coils on the Lace Gold Dually pickups is always orange is start and white is finish (though that info was not on the Lace website), and you can easily see which coil the wires are coming from. I ordered parts today. So hopefully Ill have it together soon.

Thanks again, Wolf.

[wolf]

Glad to have helped out - and good luck with the project.