vintage wire, phasing, grounding

[JDC]

I've been reading up on wiring again, and I think it's all starting to make sense!

Anyway what's vintage wire stuff do? I'd randomly guess it would be something to do with treble roll off.

If you swap round the hot and ground (south start) wires on a pickup I believe it reverses the phase, so does anything happen to the tone if you reverse phase all the pickups in a guitar?

What's the bare wire from a pickup for if there is a already ground? Seems to look like another ground wire but then why would you need 2 grounds?

Output jacks only go to ground through the strings right, they can't go to ground through the instrument cable through the amp?

Cheers!!!

[Philly Q]

I'll do two questions, someone else can do the others  :lol::

If you swap round the hot and ground (south start) wires on a pickup I believe it reverses the phase, so does anything happen to the tone if you reverse phase all the pickups in a guitar?

Phase reversal only affects the sound when two (or more) pickups, out of phase with each other, are on at the same time.  So if you reversed the phase of all the pickups, it would sound exactly the same as if you hadn't bothered.

What's the bare wire from a pickup for if there is a already ground? Seems to look like another ground wire but then why would you need 2 grounds?

If you're talking about a humbucker with 4-conductor cable, the bare wire is there to ground the metal baseplate and thereby the polepieces (and cover if there is one).  The four coloured wires are connected to the four ends of the pickup coils.

With 2-conductor cable, the braided outer shield is connected to both the end of a pickup coil and the baseplate, so it's grounding two things at once.  Which is why you can't reverse the phase on that type of pickup (except by flipping the magnet), because it would make the metal parts of the pickup "hot".

[Frank]

I just noticed this thread's been here a while and not garnered much interest - which is a shame because I'm sure a lot of techie types here could help with answers! As ever I'll chime in with some ill-informed and badly-explained opinions in the sure and certain knowledge that someone will correct me.

Anyway what's vintage wire stuff do? I'd randomly guess it would be something to do with treble roll off.

It conducts electricity, just like modern wire. The main difference is the cloth covering which some people prefer to work with. Some people may go so far as to claim it sounds different - clearly these people have ears as sensitive as the average radio telescope. The best argument in favour of vintage repro wire is that it looks cool and "aged" and "roadworn" (ugh).

If you swap round the hot and ground (south start) wires on a pickup I believe it reverses the phase, so does anything happen to the tone if you reverse phase all the pickups in a guitar?

This is a more complicated question and quite tricky to explain but I'll have a try.

Pickups generate Alternating Current (AC). This means that as the string vibrates up and down in the magnetic field, a voltage is induced in the coils of wire. But this isn't a steady voltage like you'd get from a battery, the voltage goes up and down at the same frequency that the string vibrates.

Stick with me, I'm getting to the point slowly.

If your pickups (let's say neck and bridge) are in phase then the voltages from both pickups will swing up and down together. This means that the voltages add up, re-enforcing each other.

BUT if one pickup is out of phase (hot and ground wires swapped) then the voltages partially cancel each other out as one pickup will produce a rising voltage as the other produces a falling voltage. Long story cut short, some of the frequencies cancel each other out, you get a thinner sound and less output.

EDIT: to answer the question - if they're all "out of phase" then really they're all in the same phase - so the voltages from each pickup aren't cancelling each other and you will theoretically get the same sound as when all the pickups are in "normal" phase. What you'd be doing is turning all the voltages upside down so they'd still be re-enforcing each other. It would probably sound a little bit different from normal but I'm not about to pull a load of wires out of my guitar to find out.

EDIT EDIT: to further confuse you, there are two ways in which a humbucker can be out of phase. Its overall output can be out of phase with the other pickups and/or the two coils of a single humbucker can be in or out of phase with each other.

What's the bare wire from a pickup for if there is a already ground? Seems to look like another ground wire but then why would you need 2 grounds?

Adding a grounded metal shield around a low-signal cable protects it from stray interference. It's also necessary to ground things like metal covers to reduce buzz from capacitance effects caused when you touch the covers.

Output jacks only go to ground through the strings right, they can't go to ground through the instrument cable through the amp?

Everything on the guitar is grounded to the output jack (or the bridge) and the output jack ground is electrically the same as the amp ground. The strings are grounded for the same reason as the pickup covers.

I'm hoping JPF or HTH will give a more technically informed rewrite of this!

[AndyR]

EDIT: to answer the question - if they're all "out of phase" then really they're all in the same phase - so the voltages from each pickup aren't cancelling each other and you will theoretically get the same sound as when all the pickups are in "normal" phase. What you'd be doing is turning all the voltages upside down so they'd still be re-enforcing each other. It would probably sound a little bit different from normal but I'm not about to pull a load of wires out of my guitar to find out.

I can confirm this Frank, without rippin out wires!

I have a Brian May Red Special, and the row of switches at the bottom are the phase switches. Either all three up or all three down means all the pickups are in phase together and, up or down, it sounds the same. You can con youself into thinking it might be a little bit different (I did for several days!), but I'm now convinced there's no difference that I can hear.

The "out-of-phase" fun only starts when you have two or more pickups turned on (that's the upper row of switches), with different up/down settings for the phase switches.

How Mr May has worked with this arrangement for XX years, I don't know - you need to become a master of flicking 2 or 3 switches at the same time. And even then, you can end up turning the guitar off by accident!! :lol:

[JDC]

cheers guys!!! :D

[Frank]

Andy, I could not cope with that kind of switching! I once installed the Kent Armstrong 3-switch mod in a strat as an experiment and it severely damaged my brain. There were probably 3 more usable sounds from a choice of 18 and no simple way to remember how to get those sounds (or the stock strat sounds) so I ended up back with a 5-way switch.

Playing around with phasing and series/parallel switching is fun for a while, until you have to suddenly change sounds on stage and you end up wishing you had a telecaster instead of a telephone exchange strapped round your neck.

[AndyR]

It's actually not too bad on the BM guitar - but I'm like you, I likes me 5-way.

I did find myself wondering whether there is any way, on a strat, to do a simple parallel/series switch (a push-pull or push-push) so that the 5-way always does the standard 1, 1+2, 2, 2+3, 3 - but the pickups are combined in series or parallel depending on the other switch... I have a feeling not though! :lol:

It was getting the BM guitar that alerted me to what it might sound like - the pickups are in series when combined on the BM, and Brian May's main rock rhythm tone from Queen was bridge/middle in phase. Sounds pretty much like a fat bridge humbucker...

Thing is, I wouldn't want to lose the standard positions 2 and 4 on a strat, so I'd want it switchable... (so I gave up thinking about it!)

(Funnily enough, I understand Brian May's most recent clones, the ones he uses on stage, have been rewired for strat-type parallel wiring - still got all the switches though :lol:)

[Frank]

I've thought the same thing and I toyed with the idea of using something like a 4 pole mini switch which would bypass the 5-way and take me straight to a single preset series sound, I think it was B+M series or B+M series with neck parallel. I just never got round to doing it. Now I've got strats with the S1 switching thing and I can't stand it, it's just a useless little gimmick really. And the plastic push button just feels like something off a 1970s transistor radio.

Five way switches are the only way to go with strats.

[AndyR]

Hey Frank!

Lookee what I found: http://www.tdpri.com/forum/stratocaster-discussion-forum/154058-parallel-series-throws-2-4-here-s-how.html :D

Not sure I'll be trying it in the near future, but that does seem to offer what I was dreaming of.

And if you've already got strat S1 pots, and don't like what they're wired to do, I'm guessing you could use them instead of the DP/DT push/pull pot.

[BigB]

Anyway what's vintage wire stuff do? I'd randomly guess it would be something to do with treble roll off.

If you mean "using a vintage wire", it may looks "kewl" and possibly be easier to work with, but that's about all.

If you mean "vintage wiring" (aka "50s wiring"), it's a way to have the tone capacitor always in the signal path, and impacts how your volume and tone pots reacts. I tends to avoid some of the treble loss when rolling off the volume - without the bottom loss you often get with "treble bleed" cap -, increase resonance around the cutoff frequency, and makes the interaction between volume and tone a bit less consistent and predictable than the "modern" wiring. Works best with a good capacitor (like Orange Drop or PIO). Some like it, some don't, so you'll have to try to know which way you prefer it.