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Post subject: Reverse wound ? Are you sure ?
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:27 am
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Hello Guys.

My name is André Belleza and I'm new here. I'm 38 years old and run a online guitar shop here in Brazil.

I always heard that Fender middle pickups (most of regular sets) were RWRP.
Reverse Wound AND reverse polarity.

I buy and sell thousands of pickups and noticed one thing...some are only reverse polarity.

The reverse wound means that the wire begins on the other side of the bobbin and its wound on the opposit direction of the other pickups.

I took some fender sets to see that and for my surprise all coils begin on the same side and run on the same direction. Only the polarity of the magnet is reversed. And we all know that they cancel noise.

I'm talking about the Am Std and Tex-Mex sets that are supposed to be RWRP and are only Reverse polarity.

Anyone noticed that ? I always heard that to cancel noise we must have both, RW and RP. Why is only RP and it cancels ?

I looked on internet and apparently no one talked about it.

The strange is that some sets have the correct RWRP middle pickup and others don't. I saw that on several Am Std sets.

I am right or I'm missing something ?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks !

BELLEZA.


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Post subject: Re: Reverse wound ? Are you sure ?
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:16 pm
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BELLEZA wrote:
I always heard that to cancel noise we must have both, RW and RP. Why is only RP and it cancels?


One does not have to actually wind the pickup the other direction. To get the RW effect, you just swap which lead goes to ground.

Usually the lead to the left eyelet (looking down at the pickup) is the one that goes to ground (and has a black wire), as in this picture:

Image

As you know, RP refers to the magnet polarity. If the tops of two pickups attract each other, the two pickups are in reverse polarity, and to also be RW all you need is their grounds to be to the different eyelets.

This stuff is very important when you are mixing pickups from different sets or manufacturers. Fender has used all North polarity (NNN) and all South polarity (SSS) over different years. They also use NSN and SNS orientations for their RWRP set ups. So if you are wanting to use some Texas Specials, some vintage pickups, some DiMarizo, some Seymour Duncan in a mix-and-match experiment on your Strat, you need to check the magnet polarities and then use the appropriate ground/hot configuration. A compass can help you determine if a pickup is N or S (if the north-pointing arrow of the compas points towards the top of the pickup, it is an S orientation). Or you can just try to bring the tops of the pickups towards each other to see if they are the same or different magnetic polarity.

Recently, I wanted to put two mid-70's pickups together with a late 70's DiMarzio Fat Strat pickup. I learned that all three pickups were S (south up) and that the DiMarzio's black lead was actually wired to the "hot" eyelet (the right). So it looks like my wiring is wrong (because I have a black wire going from the pickup to the selector switch), but it's all in phase (with no RWRP/hum cancelling features).

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Post subject: Re: Reverse wound ? Are you sure ?
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:23 am
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Quote:
One does not have to actually wind the pickup the other direction. To get the RW effect, you just swap which lead goes to ground.



Man! You're right. Looking carefully I noticed that in various sets.

But this is NOT recommended by serious pickup manufactors like Seymour, fralin, etc. They say the BEGINNING LEAD WIRE (start of the coil) should never be soldered to HOT. This wire is in contact with the magnets and can corrode with time and bad use causing shorting to the circuit. Apparently fender goes the easy way. Maybe because the bobbins used don't let the wire in contact with the magnets.

I actually saw Fender pickups with REAL Reversed Windings but now in std models they are not using this.

Thanks again. Helped me a lot.

Bye !

BELLEZA.


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Post subject: Re: Reverse wound ? Are you sure ?
Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:05 am
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BELLEZA wrote:
But this is NOT recommended by serious pickup manufactors like Seymour, fralin, etc. They say the BEGINNING LEAD WIRE (start of the coil) should never be soldered to HOT.


There's absolutely no basis for such a statement.

It's a simple coil of wire. Besides, it's an AC circuit, not a DC circuit, so half of the time the electricity is flowing from the "beginning" to the "end" and half of the time it's the other way. So nothing bad can happen reversing the leads; you just might end up out of phase.

If insulation is lost from some of the wire and it shorts, it can still work just fine; unless too much of the coil shorts out, then it will sound weak. The worst thing is when the wire breaks.

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Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:10 am
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Big O, I think I learn something from you every day. A great source of information. Thanks! :)


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Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:22 am
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Here is some really good info on pickups.

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/pickups.php


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Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:27 am
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That is some good info. Basic understanding of how humbuckers work is important.

I haven't seen a web site that discusses (as I started to discuss above) how to check various random pickups to see if they'll work together as a set in a guitar. Although, Guitar Nuts does give this warning:


Quote:
On newer Strats (shipped since the mid-'80s -- except maybe some "vintage" reissues), the middle pickup has reverse magnetic polarity from the neck and bridge coils which is why selecting the second or fourth position is much quieter -- in essence the two coils work the way a humbucker does. Note that you can not simply reverse the leads of the middle pickup on older Strats (with north-north-north pickups) because, while the noise signal will cancel, so will the string generated signal! It is also important to know this bit of trivia when you are replacing pickups because both north-south-north and south-north-south Strats have been shipped. If you replace only one or two pickups, and replace them with ones having the "wrong" polarity, your axe is suddenly going to sound crummy!

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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 6:58 pm
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Good info indeed. Some other things to consider are that in a Strat set you can only have one RWRP pickup. If you had two, they would become the 'normal pickups' because they are identical in polarity and winding, and the old normal pickup would act as the RWRP pickup.

It seems that you can never mix Duncan (or some other mfgrs) and Fender pickups together and expect the wiring to work out correctly without changing something around first. Sometimes you can't even mix various Fender pickups together and have them work right.

For hum canceling to occur you need opposite magnet polarity orientation and wind direction.That's the way it has to be.There's no industry standard for either,so a lot of times two pickups from different makers are incompatible with each other in terms of hum canceling.Wind direction can easily be corrected by reversing the leads.Magnet polarity is trickier to correct.You have to either physically re orient the magnets to the opposite of what they are or re-magnetize them to the opposite polarity.

Seymour Duncan and Fender pickups are magnetically opposite. Many players find that after installing a Seymour Duncan bridge single coil into a Strat they must switch the Fender mid and neck position pick ups.

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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:12 pm
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Miami Mike wrote:
Seymour Duncan and Fender pickups are magnetically opposite.


I don't think we can make that generalization. Because Fender makes pickups with both magnetic polarities and I gotta assume that SD does too. There are only 2 magnetic polarities (N and S) afterall!

As I said above, Fender makes RW/RP sets in both SNS and NSN configurations.

It is true that you have to be careful mixing SD and Fender pickups.
A compass comes in very handy.

Sort out the magnetic polarity first, then the wiring.

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