position of the poles on a humbucker

[add4]

so i'm wiring an old duncan 59 humbucker in neck position. do i have to put the screws on the neck side or it doesn't matter?

[itamar101]

Screws on the neck side.

[add4]

Thanks!
how/why does it change the sound?

[itamar101]

Thanks!
how/why does it change the sound?

If you do it the other way round then the middle position will sound very weird/out of phasey.

[Philly Q]

Don't mean to be rude, but not true, I'm afraid.

Turning the pickup round doesn't affect the phase.  Swapping the wires around would, or dismantling the pickup and flipping the magnet over.

It will make very little difference, sound-wise, which way round the pickup is, but yes, the convention would be to have the screws facing the neck.

[add4]

Don't mean to be rude, but not true, I'm afraid.

Turning the pickup round doesn't affect the phase.  Swapping the wires around would, or dismantling the pickup and flipping the magnet over.

It will make very little difference, sound-wise, which way round the pickup is, but yes, the convention would be to have the screws facing the neck.

that's what i thought, but wasn't too sure about it.
i think maybe the position of the screws could slightly change the sound if you adjust them, they will pickup the sound 2 cms away .. but that has to be a very subtle effect

[itamar101]

Don't mean to be rude, but not true, I'm afraid.

Turning the pickup round doesn't affect the phase.  Swapping the wires around would, or dismantling the pickup and flipping the magnet over.

It will make very little difference, sound-wise, which way round the pickup is, but yes, the convention would be to have the screws facing the neck.

Ah, ok. Not rude, just correcting :)
I hadn't tried it out but something told me that I'd heard it around before...

Anyway, you learn something new everyday :)

[Philly Q]

i think maybe the position of the screws could slightly change the sound if you adjust them, they will pickup the sound 2 cms away .. but that has to be a very subtle effect

Yeah, absolutely, there will be a subtle difference - more so if you adjust the polepieces, as you say. 

Also, if it's a pickup in which the two coils are wound differently - like a VHII bridge, or a DiMarzio Bluesbucker or D Sonic - then it will make a more noticeable difference which way round you place the pickup.

But basically, nothing major!  :)

[gwEm]

I've deliberately mounted the neck pickup round the wrong way to get a bit more treble, but yeah, the difference was very subtle. In the end the look was so weird I turned it back ;)

[Philly Q]

I was going to do that with my Cold Sweat set, not to change the basic sound but because I wanted to wire it with coil splits, arranged so that the inner and outer pairs of single-coils would be hum-cancelling.

Of course I never got round to it.