[guitarplayerone]

Originally Posted by ohio_eric

Usually Ibanez five way switches work something like this.

1. Neck pickup in series
2. Neck pickup in parallel
3 Both pickups on in series
4 The inner coils of both humbuckers
5. Bridge pickup in series

exactly how my guitar came. If I played only metal, I would just have Neck in series/inner coils/bridge in series and a 3-way switch. However, if you don't play just metal, or use clean tones, etc this wiring scheme really helps out your tonal options.

[Pirelli]

Originally Posted by scott from _actual time_

only if someone didn't do the rewiring right! some techs change position 4 to that because they don't realize that they have to flip the neck pickup magnet, in some neck pickups, to get the position 4 inner coils to be humbucking. so they change position 4 to both neck coils because, with the neck magnet in the wrong orientation, that will hum-cancel.

So if I have a guitar like this, should I turn the neck pickup around at the next string change to fix it? Is that what you mean by flip the neck pickup magnet?

[ibznorange]

yeah, just flip the neck pickup, so the wire is coming out of the pickup side thats AWAY from the control cavity

[scott from _actual time_]

Originally Posted by Pirelli

So if I have a guitar like this, should I turn the neck pickup around at the next string change to fix it? Is that what you mean by flip the neck pickup magnet?

maybe. turning the neck pickup around will change the magnet polarity to the right value, N or S (of course, you then have to redo the wiring). if you have a neck pickup where both coils have pole pieces made from the same kind of screws, like a Blaze, then turning the pickup around works great.

but if you have a neck pickup with one coil of one type of pole pieces and the other coil of another type, like a Air Norton with one coil of screw-head poles and one coil of flat slugs, then if you turn the pickup around you will have the screw poles closest to the bridge. that only affects the sound a tiny but, but it looks backwards, since neck humbuckers traditionally have the screw poles closest to the neck.

the way to make a neck pickup like this hum-cancel in the ibanez H-H switching scheme with the pickup installed frontwards is to pop the magnet out and flip only the magnet around. it can be tricky if you don't know what you're doing, but it's easy to learn.

that's what i meant by flipping the magnet. it's the only way to install a neck AN or PAF frontwards and still have it hum-canceling in the ibanez H-H switching scheme. many techs don't know this, so they install the pickup frontwards and change the wiring for position 4 to get a combination that is hum-canceling.