I done a Peter Green mod.

jonnyburgo

Turned the magnet around in the Seth Lover of my Sheraton, sounds alright, takes a bit of getting used to with the vol controls as the volume swells on rollback for a couple of notches, when the vol controls are at unity, thats when you get the quacky out of phase sound. Will probably put it back to normal when I next change strings.

Im sure lots know how to do it but here goes in case anybody wan to try

1. Remove neck pickup ( or just pull out a bit if wires allow, mine did) take off pup cover

2. carefully remove the tape at both ends of the pup being carefull not to damage the thin wires.

3.Loosen the screws on the baseplate.

4. gently push out the long thin magnet halfway and with a marker, just mark the end.

5. remove the magnet Don't flip it over, simply turn it 180 and put back in with the marked end going in first.

Put it back together and have a quacking good time.

(the out of phase sound only works with the selector in the middle position)

chrisj1602

Thanks for the instructions, I just wired my Les Paul out of phase so would be interesting to see if they sound different wired vs magnetic.

p90fool

chrisj1602 said:

Thanks for the instructions, I just wired my Les Paul out of phase so would be interesting to see if they sound different wired vs magnetic.

Not really. The big advantage with wired is that you can switch it on and off, obviously.
The handy thing about the magnet swap method is that you can do it with braided vintage-wired  pickups.

ICBM

In theory there is no difference between reversing the magnetic field and reversing the wiring. I wonder if there might be in practice though, due to the slight magnetic interaction between the two pickups - and also possibly that reversing the magnet might weaken it slightly because there will be residual magnetism from the original polarity in the polepieces and the steel bars underneath.

Turning the pickup round also makes a difference, either also because of the interaction with the bridge pickup, or the imbalance between the two coils sensing the string differently.

Whatever the reasons, flipping the magnet and turning the pickup round gives a much better 'Peter Green sound' than simply phase-switching the pickup wiring, to me.

OilCityPickups

If you refer to an interview with Tim mills of Bare Knuckle  ... Tim is of the opinion that rather than a magnet reversal ... PG's pickup was simply rewound backwards, and with technically the 'wrong' wire for the job. I recently tried winding one of my own Blitz Spirits with heavy formvar ... and got an interestingly different sound.

ICBM

That's quite likely given how much attention people paid to 'correct' spec for things like that back then.

I assume the pickup got turned round because whoever put it back heard that it was out of phase and thought that it would fix it, and never bothered to put it back the normal way when it didn't.

ESchap

This is actually the reverse of the PG mod but I tried the magnet flip and the reverse wiring on the bridge pickup of my 355 (they were out of phase (magnet) as stock). 

The magnet flip definitely gives a more profound change though it took a couple of days to settle. With the reverse wiring there was still an out of phase sound with both pickups selected. 

ChrisMusic

ICBM said:

That's quite likely given how much attention people paid to 'correct' spec for things like that back then.

I assume the pickup got turned round because whoever put it back heard that it was out of phase and thought that it would fix it, and never bothered to put it back the normal way when it didn't.

Most of the music business was so 'out of it' back then I'm surprised anyone even noticed.

Interesting perspectives on flipping magnets, rewind direction, turning PUs, and formvar.

I really want to play around with pickups, switching and tone again sometime soon, so thanks guys.

OilCityPickups

The world is awash with people trying to sound like other people: someone asked me a while ago if I could wind some left handed pickups for a Flying V ... as they wanted it to sound like Hendrix's. Er ... there may be some argument that using a right handed Strat back to front made both the bridge pickup angle and the pole stagger ... and perhaps thus the tone ... unique to a leftie using a right handed instrument. However, I pointed out, that provided a bucker's coils face the way god intended, it doesn't care which way up it is! The guy wouldn't have it though ... couldn't accept that it was the player who was making the unique sound.

ICBM

You should just have made them the same but with each coil mounted the other way round on the baseplate and charged him 50% more for "customising" them... or something...

For what's worth I have more than once refused to convert a left-handed Strat for right-handed playing. There are a limited enough number of left-handed guitars around for the left-handed players, without twits who want to pose as Jimi taking away some of them.

I can just about agree with the left-handed pole stagger and bridge pickup angle, and the upside-down headstock having some effect... but still, by far the most "Hendrixy" Strat I've ever played was a perfectly standard right-handed 1969 one, with a rosewood board (Jimi's were mostly maple). It even made my cack-handed attempts at playing like him sound quite realistic.

[Deleted User]

I have done this mod to a couple of Les Pauls. On one, it sounded superb; on another, it sounded awful.

The only trouble is, even when it sounds good, it screams 'Peter Green' much as the in between sounds on a Strat scream 'Mark Knopfler'. Hence probably of limited use....

Iamnobody

@jonnyburgo cheers for the info. When you have a 2 year old and are saving up for a new gaf - doing the PG mod is about as exciting as Friday nights get!

Anyway thanks to your info I thought I'd give it a go. Pretty happy with the result, just a couple of notes - my magnet wouldn't slide out.

The answer to this was to unscrew the 4 baseplate screws and the 6 adjustable pole piece screws. This allowed me to separate the bobbins and pull out the magnet and complete the job.

Cheers!

chrisj1602

I like this mod, not to sound like PG but to have more sounds from my favourite guitar.

p90fool

chrisj1602 said:

I like this mod, not to sound like PG but to have more sounds from my favourite guitar.

Me too, I always have at least one guitar with an out of phase setting. Not to bore people with "Need your love so bad", just mainly for funk rhythm stuff.