strat pickups Archives - Mr Glyn's Pickups

In this short video – Pickup Phase Explained – I look at what phase is, what it isn’t and why you need to know.

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.

Pickup Phase Explained

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

A description of what makes my “Tui” pickup for Strat different.

I’ve wound a lot of Strat pickups since I started in 1995. I started off re-winding cheap pickups and then moved on to repairing old dead Fender pickups. Every experiment was written down in a notebook with tone comments. Back when I started there wasn’t much information available so there was a lot of reverse engineering and a lot of trying things out. That learning time was invaluable to developing instinct for how to change the sound of a pickup. I’ve still got the note book and I’m still adding to it.

Here are demos of the Tui and more info.

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