replaced the pickups in my son's SX "junior" strat.....

[rick66]

i had 3 spare single coils lying around and frankly, i was bored. i just finished resealing the driveway and came in the house and got the bug to swap the pickups. individually, the pickups work fine. the neck/middle position sounds way thin; like it loses power when both are engaged. the resistance readings are:

neck - 'bout 6.75k middle - 'bout 5.35k bridge - 'bout 5.37k

what did i do wrong? i'm guessing the neck pup has too much juice?? thanks.

[Jim Collins]

It could be that the neck pickup is wired out of phase. If the middle/bridge pickup combination sounds okay, then that is the problem.

[rick66]

thanks jim. i'll have a looksee sometime this week. but, i ran the white cloth wire to the switch and the black cloth wire to ground on all three pickups. could it be that the neck pickup's white lead go to ground and the black lead go to the switch? i've never seen that before?

[Jim Collins]

Are the pickups from the same manufacturer?

There is no industry standard on either color coding or magnetic polarity. If the pickups are from different manufacturers, they very well could be out of phase with each other. Usually, a manufacturer will use the same polarity and color among his pickups, unless a pickup was built to be RWRP.

Two single coils in parallel will be a bit weaker, in output, than one single coil, but it usually isn't enough to make someone complain. The complaints usually arise when the sound is weak, thin, and nasally. That is an out of phase condition.

[rick66]

thank you, thank you the neck pup is a SD i believe and the middle/bridge are both from a fender strat. i'll reverse the wires and see if that makes a difference.

[rick66]

it worked!!! thanks again.