Humbucker Design Question

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CHEEZOR
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Post by CHEEZOR »

Does anybody know if there is a difference between humbuckers where:

A) Both coils are wound in the same direction and the end of one is connected to the start of another
or
B) The coils are wound opposite directions of each other and the 2 starts leads are connected to each other


I'm asking because "A" is the way that I thought humbuckers were usually made, but I recently saw a diagram of "B" and am curious what that would change.

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Post by Schneibster »

A standard humbucker is wired in series, which gives higher output but muffles the high frequencies. ("Series" means output of one coil goes to input of the other.) This was the original wiring on the original Gibson humbuckers on the Les Paul and SG. Wiring in parallel ("parallel" means both inputs and both outputs are wired together) gives a better high frequency response but lower output. The tone change is more subtle than a standard tone control gives, but still very noticeable. All humbuckers are two coils wound in opposite directions; this gives immunity to noise, since the noise is about the same on both, but 180 degrees out of phase (thus cancelling the noise, or anyway most of it).

I generally run my '335 copy in phase in series on both pickups for playing in the rhythm section, and in phase in parallel for playing in the melody section. My "go to" technique for interesting sounds involves placing one coil out of phase with the other three. Which coil I select depends on the tonality I want. I then fine-tune the tonality with the tone pot.

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phatt
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Post by phatt »

There was a good page on this but can't recall it,, meantime,,
You are almost there with (A)

HB = 2 coils with both starts connected (centre tap) the 2 remaining ends are then used as the 2 output connections. You can reverse that sequence of course delivering the same outcome but make sure the other PU is the same orientation.

The confusion is made harder because you are dealing with winding phase as well as magnetic phase. Both pole sets are magnetically opposite and it's the combination of these two factors that cause the hum cancelling effect not just winding phase.

Wait till you inadvertently flip over one bobbin without altering any connections and you end up scratching your head for hours trying to work out what the hell went wrong. :scratch: :hmmm: :block: winky.
I think that was the most likely cause of the Peter Green joke
HTH,, Phil.

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Post by Intripped »

phatt wrote: confusion is made harder because you are dealing with winding phase as well as magnetic phase. Both pole sets are magnetically opposite and it's the combination of these two factors that cause the hum cancelling effect not just winding phase.
The hum cancelling is due to the opposite winding direction only: if 2 coils are wrapped in opposite directions you get hum cancelling, even if the PUs are out of phase, connected in series or in parallel.

The combination of magnetic orientation and winding direction sets the phase of a pickup: two PU are in phase with each other if they have same winding direction AND same magnetic orientation, but also if they have opposite winding direction AND opposite magnetic orientation.

The 2 PUs of an humbucker must be in phase with each other, so in order to have both hum cancelling and phase consistency you need 2 PUs with opposite winding direction and opposite magnetic orientation

You can invert the phase of a PU by swapping the connections of the coil,
So it's always possible to have phase consistency between two given PUs,
...but it's not always possible to get both hum cancelling and phase consistency between two given PUs.

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Post by phatt »

Hi Intripped,

Thanks for pointing out the flaw in my wording. :oops:

I'll rephrase it;
confusion is made harder because you are dealing with winding phase as well as magnetic phase. Both pole sets are magnetically opposite and it's the combination of these two factors that cause *the unique sound* not just winding phase.

Either way,
The moment you flip one magnet pole or one coil it is no longer a normal humbucker. [smilie=a_whyme.gif]
Therefore magnet polarity plays a major role in setup of a normal HB.

As I'm sure you can appreciate tiss often hard to convey complex things with just a few words.
Cheers , Phil.

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Post by Intripped »

Hey Phatt, I didn't want to sound harsh, sorry for that
Just wanted to give some general but fixed points about PUs (not only humbuckers) in order to limit confusion

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Post by phatt »

Intripped wrote:Hey Phatt, I didn't want to sound harsh, sorry for that
Just wanted to give some general but fixed points about PUs (not only humbuckers) in order to limit confusion
Tiss all good, :thumbsup Yes easy to get confused as there are so many factors involved when trying to understand pickups.

Thanks for that link, it should help those wishing to understand it.
Phil.

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Post by CHEEZOR »

I just wanted to clarify this issue for future readers. I was wrong in my initial post. The following is how they are normally done:

Both coils are wound in the same direction and the finish end of each coil is soldered together. Then the starts form hot and ground.

See Step 6 and the table at the bottom of the page: http://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Online_Re ... p_Kit.html

big_teee from music-electronics-forum.com helped explain this and here is part of what he had to say:
Normally both coils are wound the same direction.
Tie the 2 finish leads together, put + output on the slug coil start lead.
Put - Grd on the Screw coil Start lead.
Hope this helps.

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Post by phatt »

Hey Cheezor, Sounds like you have it sorted, :thumbsup winky.

Reverse wound is a very misleading term they are just connected *Electrically out of phase*

Good explanation here; http://www.1728.org/guitar1b.htm

A good little pic close to top of page shows the detail well. :thumbsup
Phil.

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Post by DrNomis »

Humbucking pickups are interesting from a design point of view, they're an interesting combination of electrical and magnetic phasing, the way I see it the electrical phasing eliminates hum-pickup and the magnetic phasing ensures that the pickup puts out a signal, if the magnets weren't properly phased you'd effectively get no signal output due to phase-cancellations, remember that if you have two signals that are identical but are 180 degrees out-of-phase and you added the two signals together, the result is zero, or should be zero..... :thumbsup
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Post by BlueMeany »

http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... y.html?m=1

That article seems to cover the basics.

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