Les Paul pickups

MartinBush

Hi all

When I next restring my guitar I intend to put a cover back on a pickup I removed for some reason many years ago (reasons unknown). 

I've just noticed that the pickup seems to be in the wrong way round - the pickup has the adjustable screws nearest to the stopbar end, as does the bridge pickup. From looking at similar guitars online the neck pickup seems to have the screws nearer to the neck.

Is there a right/ wrong way or did I managed to put the pickup back in the wrong way all those years ago? And, if so, does it matter?

Martin

wrinkleygit

On all the LP’s I’ve ever owned I turned the neck pickup to have the poles nearer to the bridge, the thinking behind this is that it made the pickup sound a little brighter.

MartinBush

Interesting.

I can assure you there will have been no thought behind why I did it at the time - I think I just wanted to see what the pickups looked like under the cover!

victorludorum

Maybe you were trying to look like Peter Green? Did you grow your hair and fingernails at the same time as you reversed your pickup? ;-)

MartinBush

No, but if @wrinkleygit and Peter Green do/did it then maybe I should leave it...

By the way, is Peter Green still playing? 

Funkfingers

MartinBush said:

Is there a right/ wrong way

Assuming that both coils in a humbucker were identical in every way, it would still be necessary to factor in the magnetic conductive qualities of the stud and screw polepieces. Some of the more obesessive tinkerers at the Seymour Duncan User Group forum would change the filister screws to Allen/hex head ones (or vice versa) in search of tonal change.

In the real world, no two coils are exactly alike. Many of my favourite humbuckers have one coil intentionally overwound compared to the other. Where this has been done, rotating the pickup through one hundred and eighty degrees will produce a minimal change in the sound. Then, again, so would changing to a mounting surround with a different pitch angle built into it.

MartinBush said:

does it matter?

Guitar sounds are subjective.

If you like the sound of your guitar with the neck position pickup in its present orientation, leave it like that.

MartinBush said:

I intend to put a cover back on a pickup

This will almost certainly change the sound of your pickup. Depending on the metal type, the cover will direct more of the magnetism towards the strings. Expect a slight roll off of extreme high frequency treble content. The manner and the firmness with which the cover is fastened can also make a difference. There are various techniques for minimising microphonic squeal.



CAPTAIN'S LOG SUPPLEMENTAL:
1) On some circuits involving humbuckers with twelve identical polepieces, 4-con + shield output cable and a glued-on bar magnet, the pickup orientation could be critical to maintaining hum-cancellation for some selector switch coil permutations.

2) With the DiMarzio Bluesbucker, pickup orientation determines the position of the stronger coil. This will affect both the full and split mode sounds.

wrinkleygit

The so called Peter Green sound is achieved by reversing one of the magnets, not simply by turning the whole pickup around.

MartinBush

Here's Peter's take on things: https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/deep-secret-behind-peter-greens-magic-1959-les-paul-tone

Thanks to everyone for their responses. I will see what I feel like when I get down to restringing. As I recall, the cover was attached with some double-sided tape (small piece) and soldered. 

The sound isn't really my concern as I tend to use the bridge pickup. I now prefer the look of the covers and I am trying to reverse some of my odd choices from many years ago (including losing two of the knobs...)

guitars4you

Latest issue of Guitarist - Big feature on Pete Green + big interview with Tim at Bare Knuckles about the PG pick-ups

MartinBush

Cheers - I may have picked that up in WH Smith had the world been open for business

johnhe

I have turned the neck humbucker around on a couple of my humbucking guitars in the past. It definitely brightened up the neck pickup a noticeable amount on the guitars I tried it on. Not enough to make it work for me. 

ICBM

MartinBush said:

Here's Peter's take on things: https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/deep-secret-behind-peter-greens-magic-1959-les-paul-tone

Unfortunately that isn't true.

Magnetically and electrically reversing the pickup might not give *exactly* the same sound - because it does depend to a tiny extent on the magnetic interaction between the two pickups - but it will be extremely close, and without knowing which it is you will not be able to tell from the sound of the guitar. There is no special 'response to pitch' or 'sweeter and more musical' sound from reversing the pickup magnetically rather than electrically. That's just mojo-waffle...

It also ignores the fact that Green's Les Paul has an unusually distinctive sound even when played on the completely unaltered bridge pickup, which you can hear when Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett play it too - the 'magic tone' is in the wood.

MartinBush

It's interesting stuff although I'm not good enough to benefit from tone - my guitar sounds how it sounds and I couldn't tell you if it was good, bad, different or exceptional  

SunDevil

If you listen to Peter's playing on 'A Hard Road' you can hear the same Les Paul without the out of phase sound, which would suggest it wasn't a factory stock magnet flip, but something that was done later

There's another story about a bad pickup repair at Macaris where one of the coils or rewired with what would have been 60s Fender style wire on one of the coils, so this being done badly or a magnet flip at that point would seem a likely candidate

Yet another story says the pickup was installed reversed in an attempt to cure the out of phase-y-ness - either by Peter or by Macaris

It's still a great sounding guitar and given the value, I'm totally impressed that Kirk Hammett still gigs it

Also agree with @ICBM that you can hear it still sounding very distinctive on just the bridge pup - none of which is explained by the above 

 Sadly Peter has had a hard paper round and I don't think his memory is great

If you want to know for sure what the deal is with the guitar, ask Charlie Chandler - he did the headstock repair when it was broken in Gary Moore's car accident