Amp (and pedals for that matter) polarity

ecc83

Question asked on another forum and has prompted me to ask if there is any standard throughout the industry?

Never came up in my time and I could not even tell you if poarity is consistent over the range of "our" models!

Dave.

ICBM

Not as far as I know. There used to be some nonsense about it being important for a positive-going input signal to move the speaker forward, supposedly to give better 'punch' from pick-attack transients, but that totally ignores the way the string movement is translated into the signal, the effectively random phase of guitar pickups, and the way we perceive absolute phase in sounds.

There are many guitar amps that aren't even the same polarity on different channels, both parallel-channel amps (eg Fender Blackfaces with reverb) and channel-switchers (Mesa DC series for certain, loads of others).

Pedals *should* ideally retain polarity both in bypass and when on, but there are very many which don't. Not doing so is considered a fault in studio-quality gear because of the problems it causes in mixing, but that's the only area I know of where it is.

Modulus_Amps

no, of course there is no standard, there is no standard even in the same amp most of the time.

If it was a real problem there would be more standardisation I suspect.