Always nice to get a fresh set of pickups in my opinion =) Yeah the out of phase positions can be weird. lol My friend Trev loves to mod his guitar with all sorts of push pulls,switches,wiring changes, out of phase and all that. lol for me less is more because less is really alot once you realize how much the " less " really is! lol I aint tryin to get philosophical on y'all or nothin, but its true. =) Thanks for the in-depth explanation that was well put.
Out of Phase positions can be weird and also very usefull.
Neck humbucker out-of-phase and you get that Peter Green's tone.
Brigde single-coil out-of-phase in series with other pickup, under high distortion and you are in Brian May's territory.
Usually, OOP works better in series and under distortion (and I love it!).
But, as always, each pickup combination enhances some frequencies while dimming others so, only experimenting you can determine if the sound is good or not for that axe and pair of pickups.
My philosofy is a little different I want "the most of the useful combos with the minimun ergonomic issues and an easy mental map to obtain each one".
So, I started with the weirdest wiring (about 90 combos with 3 humbuckers), just to understand how each combination affects the sound.
Then, I implemented some kind of "advanced JP wiring mod", with 22 combos, using two humbuckers 2T and 2V pull/pushes, in an LP-like clone. I've got The Mule at neck, and Riff Raff at bridge. Some day, I will post some demo video. 'm so lazzy for that.
My last design is 10 combos in an strato, 1 volume , 1 no-load tone and 1 toggle switch. Simpler, yes. That's the one that will test this Friday, with real amp (I did it with Amplitube 3).
I'm everytime reducing the number of combos, just selecting the most useful with minimum tweaking but, I still want something else than stock ones.
