Middle position lacking mids - would a capacitor (a la Bill Lawrence) help?

hessodreamy

At some points in my history of pickup swaps in various guitars, I’ve found that the middle position of a two-pickup guitar saps more mids than I’d like. Now I’m NOT talking about it being wired out of phase - it’s not that pronounced. I always check the wiring gives the same polarity of voltage on both pickups. Also I’ve tried reversing the wires and it puts it proper out of phase. Or sometimes exactly the same. It’s almost like it’s half out of phase. 

Today I read about the Bill Lawrence wiring on a telecaster which (among other things) puts the pickups partly out of phase by running one pickup through a .02 pf capacitor. Is that something which could be worth experimenting with if I’m finding a middle position a little lacking in mids? 

I’m about to embark on combining a couple of not-designed-to-go-together pickups, so thought it might be worth having this trick in the bag. 

Funkfingers

It is unclear whether you are referring to the middle pickup on a three-pickup guitar such as a Stratocaster and selected Gibsons or the “both pickups” position on a two pickup guitar.

On the majority of dual pickup guitars, the middle/both position runs both pickups in parallel and in phase. This reduces the overall d.c. resistance and, hence, the apparent power being sent to the amplifier. 

Additionally, sensing the vibrating strings at two different points will lead to some frequencies cancelling out and others getting boosted.

The exact perceived power drop and frequency filtering will depend on the type and output of your chosen pickups.   

It is difficult to comment any further without knowing more about your pickups and the host guitar.

hessodreamy

@Funkfingers ;
Doh - you're right, I wasn't making much sense. I'm talking dual-pickup guitars here. 

But yeah, the middle position usually has some degree of frequency cancellation (especially, I'd say, with single-coil guitars) and that's often a good thing. But in some cases it's too much, or just not what I want. Just wondering if the in-line capacitor would e a tool to try if I find myself in that situation again.

Keefy

I recently did the Jerry Donahue thing on one of my Teles. A switch puts the neck pickup out of phase with the bridge but via a capacitor so that a lot of the lower frequencies don’t cancel. I’m undecided whether I like it - it sounds a bit Strat-y, but it’s a cheapish Strat sound, and I much prefer the regular two-pickup sound. On that guitar it does have the minor advantage of being hum-cancelling, but I live without that option on a couple of my other guitars.

Funkfingers

The half-out-of-phase mod only works well if the neck pickup is a Stratocaster type or one of those tall Telecaster format ones designed to sound like a Stratocaster. 

I would like to hear this mod done with the Monty’s “Danish Pete” Honoré signature pickup pair.

hessodreamy

I particularly had trouble when I put some jazzmaster pickups in a jaguar. One of the reasons I sold the guitar (apart from the usual wanderlust) was that the middle position was too cancelling for my taste. I figured the jag scale and the jazz pickups just wouldn’t do a good both-pickups-on position. I now wonder if I could have saved it. 

Keefy

Funkfingers said:

The half-out-of-phase mod only works well if the neck pickup is a Stratocaster type or one of those tall Telecaster format ones designed to sound like a Stratocaster. 

...

I didn’t know that - makes sense though.

CasperCaster

Funkfingers said:

The half-out-of-phase mod only works well if the neck pickup is a Stratocaster type or one of those tall Telecaster format ones designed to sound like a Stratocaster. 

My opinion is that it works fine with a regular Tele neck pickup, or indeed in any two pickup guitar, but the subjective quality of the results are very dependent on how well matched the pickups are, including pickup height (and the distance between them too) - I think playing with pickup heights seems to have quite a big effect with this particular mod. Anyway, given that many people prefer the sound of a Strat neck pickup over that of a Tele, and that a Strat neck pickup has no metal cover, it's easy to see why it is often the preferred pickup for this mod, but that shouldn't rule out traditional Tele neck pickups. To my knowledge the first commercially available version of this circuit was the original Gibson L6S from 1973 (designed by Bill Lawrence), which predates the Fender JD Tele by well over a decade.

Returning to Tele's, I prefer the half out of phase sound (I hate that name, but we have to call it something) with a slightly hotter and richer neck pickup. The only thing to remember is that the pickup which has its phase reversed needs it's cover to be earthed separately, or not at all (on a Tele neck pickup typically three wires, the third being a separate earth to the cover) - failure to do this means the cover will be in the 'hot' side of the circuit when the phase is flipped, and you'll have a lot of unwanted noise. Of course, if you do use a Strat neck pickup this isn't a problem.

Regarding the Duncan/Donahue description of the circuit, there really is a lot of 'smoke and mirrors' in their description. Whilst it's true that for ac the current leads voltage in capacitive circuits, the principal role of the capacitor in this circuit is a simple bass cut (caps have low impedance to treble and high impedance to bass). If the cap was genuinely shifting the phase by 90deg there would be no need to electrically reverse the phase of the pickup (flipping the hot and earth) as the cap would be doing that anyway. Rather, as out of phase signals tend to cancel each other (what you hear is the difference of the two signals), cutting bass from just one pickup means the bass component from the second pickup isn't cancelled when the two are combined out of phase - hence more bass in the final sound. Getting more bass by cutting bass from one pickup may sound counterintuitive, but in this specific case it's exactly what is happening.

Incidentally I've also tried the circuit in a Strat, wiring a phase switch (with cap as the jumper) to the middle pickup. Since positions 2 and 4 on a Strat are often erroneously referred to as out of phase (they are actually in parallel and in phase) I jokingly referred to the mod as HOoPOoP - Half Out of Phase Out of Phase.  I can save everyone else the trouble of trying it as it was terrible!