Series guitar wiring question

[tedzepplin]

I have a guitar with two single coil pick-ups. If I switch-around/reverse the connecting wires on one of the pick-ups, will that give me a series connection when both pick-ups are turned on?

[Dan Desy]

Finally, a real technical discussion :)

To answer your question, no, reversing the wires will not make it a series connection, if the pickups were connected in parallel to start out with.

This is a (bad) representation of a parallel wiring:

----------
| | |
P1 P2 Output
| | |
----------

Inverting the wires on one of the pickups (P1 or P2) will only change the relative phase between them.

Here's what a series connection looks like:

-------------
| |
P1
| Output
P2
| |
-------------

Hope this made some sense... :)

[Dan Desy]

OK, so I can't make my little diagrams align properly, but basically, a parallel connection connects each side of the pickups together. Series connects the hot of one to the ground of the other... Sorry I can't be more "graphical".

[- X -]

Calling Clorenzo, is he still with us :confused:

[Spudboy]

Yeah... actually, that's exactly what you are supposed to do when you install a pickup only to find it is out of phase with the other one. To get a series set up, you'd have to remove the grounded connection of one pickup and the "hot" output of the other one, then connect the two wires together. However at this point the selector switch becomes redundant...

[tedzepplin]

Thanks for the info. that makes sense. I had looked at series wiring diagrams on the web but most were for other types of pick-up combinations and didn't make sense to me. but your simple explanations helped me.