Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

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GreenKnee
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Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by GreenKnee » Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:48 am

Hi all,

I've just picked up this beautiful J Mascis Telecaster:

Image

Now I've set it up with my usual flatwound arrangement and made all the adjustments to make it just right it feels as good as it looks. The pickups sound great, got all the right Tele sounds on the right places. Except the middle position. On this particular model it is wired out of phase, and so gives that thin quacky sound. I'm not against this sound at all, it's just I think the usual in phase sound would be more usable for the context in which I plan to use the guitar.

How easy a swap is it? 2 wires? Or would it be more complex than that?

Thanks for any help!

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s_mcsleazy
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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by s_mcsleazy » Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:13 pm

2 wires coming from the neck pickup, just swap them around
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GreenKnee
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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by GreenKnee » Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:46 pm

s_mcsleazy wrote:
Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:13 pm
2 wires coming from the neck pickup, just swap them around
Thanks for this. I thought this might work but when I've dug a little deeper ( https://youtu.be/dHcXqmkCY6k ) it seems to be more complicated :wacko:

I'll try swapping the wires over tomorrow and hopefully it'll be as easy as that

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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by HNB » Tue Nov 30, 2021 2:14 pm

yup! You can swap the two wires. You want to be careful with teles though because the neck's metal cover is normally attached to ground, so swapping wires without disconnecting the metal cover from the main ground and doing a separate third wire could lend to negative effects. On the same token, the bridge pickup could have a copper base plate which is also connected to the ground wire. You would want that to be separated also. The copper plate on the bottom of the tele bridge pickup is how a lot of them ground the bridge and strings. (The screws touch the pickup base and the bridge plate which touches the strings.) You don't want all of that to be hot just like you don't want the neck pickup cover to be hot.
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timtam
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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by timtam » Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:11 pm

There's no Fender parts/service manual for the Mascis tele yet. So it's not clear how the pickups are constructed/wired. They're described as "custom", which could mean that one is reverse wound and thus only has two wires, one of which would share ground with the metal cover/plate. In which case you would need to separate the shared ground from the negative side of the pickup that you now wish to make the positive (hot), as suggested above. Or they could both be a standard wind direction, but with one having already had the separation of ground and coil wire done, so that the negative side of the coil could be connected as the hot and be OOP in the middle position.

Inspecting both pickups is the only way to tell which one might be easier to mod for an in-phase middle position. Three wires on at least one pickup is good (separate ground). Two wires on both pickups will mean one pickup will need some work (unless maybe the bridge pickup has no metal base plate).
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GreenKnee
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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by GreenKnee » Wed Dec 01, 2021 11:04 am

So I just opened up the control plate to check it out and both pickups have 2 wires coming from them, so looks like I'm going to have to dive a bit deeper.

I'll wait until next time I fancy changing some strings to make things easier.

Thanks for the tips :)

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Re: Swap out of phase pickups to be in phase?

Post by fisonic » Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:05 pm

You will probably need to desolder the pickup cover link on the neck & either link the other pickup wire to the bridge cover or run a seperate wire back & solder them both to earth. The only reason I made the second suggestion is if you want the option of fitting a 4 way switch setup later.

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