Posted on March 19, 2023March 25, 2026 by mrglynspickups — 1 Comment

Understanding Guitar Pickup Phase: A Simple Guide

Guitar pickup phase is simply the direction in which the wave form moves first.

When the strings are played that vibration is ‘heard’ by the pickup. The pickup converts the movement to electricity. The waveform of that electrical signal is roughly a sine wave. If the sine wave moves up first it is called positive phase.

If it’s first movement is down it’s called negative phase.

Sine wave to demonstrate pickup phase — Negative Phase

If you have a guitar with just one single coil pickup, like a Les Paul Junior, this makes no difference. But if you are combining more than one pickup like a HSS Strat then phase can be important.

Imagine a guitar with 2 pickups. Then think these 2 pickups are in the opposite phase to each other. The 2 signals are out of phase so will cancel each other out. This is how noise canceling headphones work. But the signals are not identical. The pickups are listening to different parts of the string vibrations. So the signal isn’t completely lost, it’s just greatly reduced. What you are left with is a thin quaky tone.

The convention is for humbuckers to be in positive phase. Single coils (at least Fender types) are in negative phase.

So what happens if you want to convert your Strat to HSS. Maybe add a humbucker to the neck position of your Telecaster. that’s where 4 conductor humbucker wire comes in. It’s a simple case of swapping two wires.

All Mr Glyn’s Pickups single coil pickups come with 3 conductor wire – positive, negative and earth. That way its easy to change the phase of your P90 without a problem.

I use a Strat to demonstrate the ‘out of phase’ sound and how it would sound if it really was out of phase. There’s no maths, no diagrams. Just a simple explanation with a guitar to demonstrate.

In this short video I look at what guitar pickup phase is, what it isn’t and why you need to know any of this.

Guitar Pickup Phase Explained

Busting the Out Of Phase myth

Positions 2 and 4 on Strat switches are often referred to as ‘out of phase’ when they really aren’t. Those positions are the sound of 2 pickups in parallel (a humbucker is in series). Out of phase is quite different as you’ll hear in this video.

There is another video in this series explaining how to test phase – the easy way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lhnCf4JIyw&t=3s

Pickup Phase Explained

How to test pickup phase — Test Pickup Phase

How Do Humbuckers Work? — Test Pickup Phase

For more blog posts https://mrglynspickups.com/blog/

Updated July 2023

Posted on March 15, 2023March 25, 2026 by mrglynspickups — Leave a comment

Easy Methods to Test Guitar Pickup Phase

As part of my series on How Pickups Work here is How To Test Pickup Phase – The Easy Way.

There is, of course, a hard way and that’s putting pickups into a guitar and having a listen later. That’s fine if you get it right first time. But a pain if you have to re-wire the pickup again later.

In this video I demonstrate how to use a cheap test meter to identify which phase your pickup is in. And you don’t have to take it out of the guitar.

Its a very simple test using an analog (needle type) meter. It’s simply a case of hooking the pickup up to the meter, setting the meter to Milli Amperes and tapping the poles of the pickup with a screwdriver. The needle will “kick” to either the right or left. This indicates the phase.

Traditionally, Gibson style and Fender style pickups are in the opposite phase to each other. This is just how it is. I doubt it was done on purpose, there’s a 50/50 chance.

So it’s really useful to know how to wire your pickups especially if they have an unfamiliar colour code. In my line of work I often repair pickups. I need to send them back to the customer in the correct phase. This is the simple test I use.

Every new pickup I make is tested in this way just to make sure. Especially with humbuckers, if the final signal from the coils is out of phase the output can be tiny.

While on the subject of humbuckers it might be worth watching this video where I explain how humbuckers actually ‘buck’ hum. It’s a bit of a side track but interesting stuff if you’re getting into this whole phase thing.

The most useful application of this test is when wiring or repairing a HSS (a humbucker and 2 single coils) loaded guitar. With a HSS guitar you have to make sure the humbucker is in phase with the single coil pickups. Remember, humbuckers are usually in the opposite phase to single coils.

If it is out of phase you’ll find position 2 of the 5 way switch (bridge and middle pickups combined) sounds very quiet, thin and has an odd ‘quack’. Either bridge or middle pickups will be fine on their own but the phase really matters when they’re on together.

It is surprising how many guitar repair people don’t know about this.

I realized after making this video that I needed to make another on what guitar pickup phase actually is. So here’s a link to that one.

In this second video I demonstrate the sound of pickups out of phase so you can hear the difference which is, of course, the whole point. Although on the whole we try and avoid the sound of pickups out of phase it can be a useful tone in some situations. No sound is bad, just good for different stuff. The most famous example is the famous ‘Greenie’ Les Paul.

There is also a demonstration of the Strat ‘out of phase’ sound and how it isn’t out of phase at all – yeah really! The sound of positions 2 and 4 on a Strat are 2 pickups in parallel. I have no idea how it was ever called out of phase but we seem to be stuck with it.

Thanks for reading How To Test Pickup Phase.

Here is more about Mr Glyn’s Pickups – https://mrglynspickups.com/mrglyns-pickups/

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Posted on August 18, 2020August 21, 2025 by mrglynspickups — Leave a comment

An Amazing Fact About Guitar Pickups

The wire in guitar pickups is pretty thin. Numbers like 0.063mm diameter are hard to imagine so I thought I’d put it another way – here’s an Amazing Fact About Guitar Pickups…

To find more about Mr Glyns Pickups go to the website.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcDggiRTQyFec5KAVHsC2xA

Tag: how pickups work