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Magnetic Poles of Epiphone Humbucker Pickups


Lefty Bill

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I have some extra 2-wire Epiphone humbucker pickups for projects and have changed the output leads to a shielded 4-wire split coil wiring arrangement.

 

I used the Gibson wire color format of R-W-G-B.. red, white, green and black and the shield only to the frame plate.

 

The Les Paul Special II that I'm assembling has the 700T bridge, and a 650R in the neck position.

Since this Special II body was purchased as a project body, without a neck, I hadn't tried playing it, but I did change the wiring to shielded 4-wire leads for experimental purposes.

 

Both p-ups are now wired with the same R-W-G-B wire color arrangement, in that the original (audio +) signal wire is red, and the original (-) shield ground lead is black.

The white and green extend from where the internal original series coil jumper lead was.

 

Original 2-wire

A+: N start (center conductor of orig shielded cable)

(-) S start (shield of orig shielded cable, also frame ground)

 

Present 4-wire arrangement

Red: N start

Whi: N fin

Grn: S fin

Blk: S start

 

Are some Epiphone magnetic poles reversed?

 

In looking up the magnetic pole orientation "polarity" for h-b p-ups, I saw that at least 17 brand name h-b p-ups, including Gibson, have the slug coil as North and the screw coil as South.

 

This all gets a little confusing for me, since the neck and bridge h-b p-ups are always originally orientated with the slug coils facing each other (for a 2 h-b model).. and yet the center conductor of the original shielded cable (A+) is moved from one of the h-b coils to the other.

 

I have a couple of Epi p-ups that are reversed.. a 700T bridge, and 57CH neck.

I've read that the pole orientation can be reversed by loosening the bobbin screws, sliding the magnet out, and rolling the magnet over to reinsert it (not rotating the ends 180 degrees).

 

Regards,

Bill

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I just couldn't stop myself and I knew only a few people would understand.

 

I'd read about the subject here and the MLP forum, and it seems that both the magnetic poles and theories mostly just seem to go round 'n round.

 

I added the 4-wire leads so I could experiment with series/parallel wiring arrangements, and didn't have any particular goal in mind.. as I'm still new at these sorts of modifications, but I did find it odd that some of the poles of the Epiphone pickups I have appear to be reversed (and they don't appear to have been tampered with).

 

Regards,

Bill

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