# Neck humbucker north and south poles?



## sevenstringj (Jul 15, 2011)

On a typical 2 humbucker guitar, do the bridge and neck pickup magnets face the same way or opposite? In other words, from bridge to neck, is it south-north-south-north or south-north-north-south?


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## rippedflesh89 (Jul 15, 2011)

sevenstringj said:


> On a typical 2 humbucker guitar, do the bridge and neck pickup magnets face the same way or opposite? In other words, from bridge to neck, is it south-north-south-north or south-north-north-south?


 
typically, it should be like this:

bridge : screw coil towards the bridge, slug coil towards the neck

neck : screw coil towards the neck, slug coil towards the bridge

screw coil = the coil that has screws in it, this allows you to adjust the pole piece under each string

slug coil = the coil that has pole-pieces that cannot be adjusted, they have no slots in them, so adjusting these is not possible

i hope this helps


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## sevenstringj (Jul 15, 2011)

^Yeah, I got that. I'm talking about the magnets. These are Wolfetone rewinds and he sent me a new magnet for the neck which I put in myself. So to reiterate my original question, going from bridge to neck should the poles be south-north-south-north or south-north-north-south? I'm throwing in a push-pull pot for coil splitting and want to combine the inner coils.


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## rippedflesh89 (Jul 15, 2011)

sevenstringj said:


> ^Yeah, I got that. I'm talking about the magnets. These are Wolfetone rewinds and he sent me a new magnet for the neck which I put in myself. So to reiterate my original question, going from bridge to neck should the poles be south-north-south-north or south-north-north-south? I'm throwing in a push-pull pot for coil splitting and want to combine the inner coils.


 

well, essentially:

screw coil = south coil and

slug coil = north coil... sooo

your answer, it should go :

bridge: south-north north-south :neck


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## sevenstringj (Jul 15, 2011)

OK, that's what I did.


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## sevenstringj (Jul 16, 2011)

Everything sounds great, but I'm getting hum in the middle position when tapped (inner coils in parallel). There's no hum in any of the 3 humbucker positions.

Ideas?


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## Racerdeth (Jul 16, 2011)

That'll be because you've got two north coils running. You'll need a north and a south for it to be hum cancelling, I think.


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## sevenstringj (Jul 16, 2011)

So does anyone know for sure? Is it a wiring problem or do I need to flip one of the magnets? Without coil tapping, there's no hum in any of the 3 positions. When tapped, there's 60Hz hum in the bridge and neck positions, which is expected, but there's the same hum in the middle position.


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## Dead Undead (Jul 17, 2011)

Why flip a magnet? You can always just split it to use the other coil.


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## sevenstringj (Jul 17, 2011)

Dead Undead said:


> Why flip a magnet? You can always just split it to use the other coil.



I want to use the inner coil. I suppose I could do what you're saying and turn the whole pickup around. But I want to figure out why this isn't working as I think it should.

Flipping one of the magnets didn't do anything. All 3 humbucker positions are still quiet, but when I split them there's hum in the middle position.

There are 4 possible configurations for 2 single coils (or 2 tapped humbuckers) wired in parrallel...

1) Same winding direction + same magnet polarity
2) Same winding direction + opposite magnet polarity
3) Opposite winding direction + same magnet polarity
4) Opposite winding direction + opposite magnet polarity

So just to get things straight in my head, what should I expect from each of those 4 setups in terms of both tone and hum? This will help me identify what the issue is.


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