Tele pickup strangeness

rico

I put a Bare Knuckle Boss in my Tele yesterday (thanks @amarok1971) and it sounds great but position two now sounds very thin and weedy - out of phase perhaps?

I'm 99.9% sure that I wired it up properly but are either of the pickups reverse wound or reverse polarity to cause this? There is the stock v-mod thing in the neck.

Help!

poopot

Just swop the wires round and see!... 

ICBM

Yes, the pickups are out of phase.

Solving this can be tricky on a Tele - does the new bridge pickup have a metal baseplate, and/or is there a separate ground wire running to under the bridge itself?

Does the neck pickup have a cover? Do you like the sound of it or do you wish it could be a touch brighter/clearer?

I know that sounds like an unrelated question but there is a potential solution in the answer to one of them!

rico

ICBM said:

Yes, the pickups are out of phase.

Solving this can be tricky on a Tele - does the new bridge pickup have a metal baseplate, and/or is there a separate ground wire running to under the bridge itself?

Does the neck pickup have a cover? Do you like the sound of it or do you wish it could be a touch brighter/clearer?

I know that sounds like an unrelated question but there is a potential solution in the answer to one of them!

1. Yes the new pickup has a baseplate, as did the old one. However, the old one has a connection to the baseplate from the windings (I think)

2. Yes it does have a cover and I do like the sound of it but I could be open to experimentation

I can snap some pics of the old pickup if that helps explain it...

ICBM

rico said:

1. Yes the new pickup has a baseplate, as did the old one. However, the old one has a connection to the baseplate from the windings (I think)

Is there a separate ground wire to the bridge as well?

There are two ways to reverse the phase of the bridge pickup - either swap the connections at the pickup, including the link wire that goes from the eyelet to the baseplate, or to cut the link wire, reverse the connections at the control cavity end, and add a separate bridge ground wire (some people are less nervous about doing this than soldering on the pickup itself!). If there is already a separate ground wire then obviously that's the easier method anyway.

rico said:

2. Yes it does have a cover and I do like the sound of it but I could be open to experimentation

The neck pickup can be done in the same way, or if you want to simply disconnect the cover - which brightens the sound of the pickup - by cutting its link wire, you can then simply swap the connections at the controls. If you find you don't like the sound, you can re-connect the cover to the other eyelet, so always cut the ground link as close to the eyelet as you can, as the cover is harder to solder to.

amarok1971

Glad it arrived safe and you are happy with it, sorry i cannot help tho!