Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

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Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

Fitted the BK Abraxas set but the mid position has that thin, nasally sound. How do I know if I need to flip a magnet or reverse wires?

Ta

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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Single coil »

Reverse the wires and see what it does.

The arirang had simple two wire (hot and ground) pickups with the peter green thing going on, so a magnet had been flipped.

Swapping wires is a buttload easier than flipping a magnet so give it a hoon first.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Bg »

yeah, swap the wires first.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by calling card »

I know how it screws with the ocd seeing the wrong coloured wires connected but it's well worth it.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

Recorded this. From 0:27 you can really hear what I'm on about. Sounds like a cocked wah.

Pisser when you've used all your zen-like mind-state to achieve super neat wiring then have to start fucking undoing it...


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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by sizzlingbadger »

if its 4 wire conductor then you can reverse the wires as the screen is separate. If its a co-axe 2 conductor wire then flip the mag around.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

Cheers chaps. So, I reversed the wires on the bridge pickup and though it fixed the problem it's now a bit noisy. So I now need to take the bare earth wire and shift that to earth too. Y'see, when I got the pickups I had to extend the wires. Now that particular connection is up inside the channel between the pickup and control cavities. Feckin' arse. I'll need to de-solder it again and remove the pickup, unpick my neat, heat-shrink protected connection and move the bare earth wire.

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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Slowy »

I can really hear the Abraxas connection in your tone. Pure Samba Pa Ti
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

Slowy wrote:I can really hear the Abraxas connection in your tone. Pure Samba Pa Ti
Until I read that I swear I never saw the connection between those pickups and the guitar I put them in. I bought them a month or two ago before the PRS Santana came up. Funny coincidence.

I've no particular liking for Santana's tone TBH but the guitar is like a nice DC Les Paul with great access and a trem, and the pickups are really open-sounding. Love the neck one. The amp sounds a lot nicer than that recording might suggest.

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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

sizzlingbadger wrote:if its 4 wire conductor then you can reverse the wires as the screen is separate. If its a co-axe 2 conductor wire then flip the mag around.
Is flipping a magnet exactly the same thing as reversing the wires? Just wondering. Ta

Pickups have five wires including the bare ground wire. That's usually with the black on the back of a pot of course but as I've now reversed the wires I'm guessing I'll have to disconnect it from the black and move it back to the pot along with the red. PITA.

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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by sizzlingbadger »

The bare wire stays on ground (back of the pot), just swap the black and red. Flipping the magnet has the exact same effect but I would swap the wires in your case.

You could paint the PRS gold and pretend to be Peter Green instead.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Bg »

sizzlingbadger wrote:The bare wire stays on ground (back of the pot), just swap the black and red. Flipping the magnet has the exact same effect but I would swap the wires in your case.

You could paint the PRS gold and pretend to be Peter Green instead.
No point without two volume pots to set the honk blend :P Part of the magic is in the volume interaction.
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

sizzlingbadger wrote:The bare wire stays on ground (back of the pot), just swap the black and red. Flipping the magnet has the exact same effect but I would swap the wires in your case.

You could paint the PRS gold and pretend to be Peter Green instead.
Thanks for that. Feckin' hate that Peter Green thing. :-(

Off work tomorrow morning for a thing. Once the thing's done I should have time to get it sorted. :thumbup:

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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by mrmofo »

i read that flipping the mag is different to flipping the wires. cant remember the technical reason.
wait on...
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Re: Reverse the pickup wires or flip the magnet?

Post by Molly »

mrmofo wrote:i read that flipping the mag is different to flipping the wires. cant remember the technical reason.
wait on...
I asked Bare Knuckle the same question. Got this:

the sound of reversing the magnet and reversing the wiring a broadly the same. The only difference tends to come if somebody reverses the wiring and also turns the pickup around in the guitar, so that the correct inner/outer coil is selected in coil-split positions on certain guitars. Depending on the model of pickup that position change can make a bit of a difference to the tone, but it's not dramatic. If you have managed to get things in-phase by reversing the wires then all of your switching options should continue to work just fine.

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