Question on double humbucker sound when combined

[Hank75]

Hello, I have a 594 McCarty that has 2 Seymour Duncan humbuckers (59 SH-1 Neck, and JB SH-4 in Bridge)
I'm wondering if when selecting both Humbuckers I should expect to see a pretty dramatic drop in bottom end or lows. When I select each humbucker individually, they both sound amazing, but together they become very thin I would say.
Both volume pots are PRS Core 500K that I added a 150K resistor in series (Kinman method) with the 180pF treble bleed cap, there is a .022uf cap between the volume hot and tone pot as it comes from the factory).
BTW, 2 Volume and 2 tone-push/pull
I thought that maybe my 3-way toggle switch was no good, but it's hard to test because I do pickup a bit of continuity between the grounding/shielding wires and the hot connections, something like about 400 M ohms. I didn't think this was normal but got the same results when testing a couple loose pots between the body and terminals 1 and 2. I though the poles 1 and 2 should be isolate from ground, but maybe not?
The 2 Seymour Duncan are recommended pairs for each other.
Maybe this is how the pick-ups re-act with each other?

 

[Birdsofprey]

Sounds like there out of phase. So the swap the pos/neg from one of the pickups should cure that.

 

[Hank75]

Sounds like there out of phase. So the swap the pos/neg from one of the pickups should cure that.

This is the exact way I'm hooked up. To switch the pos/neg from one pickup how would I do it?
Would I unmarry the green and bare, then tie the black with the bare and attach to ground, then green becomes my hot signal?

 

[Birdsofprey]

Yes

 

[GuitarJammin]

Yes exactly as you state. The pickups are out of phase as previously stated.

 

[deathworlder]

 

[Hank75]

Thank you Birdsofprey, I reversed the wires or polarity on my neck pick-up and I now have my fullness back when both Humbuckers are engaged.
Its weird because both pickups are Seymour Duncan 4 conductor hook ups, so in theory they should be the same, I just don't know?
I've heard that some guitar manufacturers (Ibanez i think, in a system identified as "RWRP" ) , have the middle pickup reversed. I'm wondering if the secondhand, but unused, Seymour Duncan 59 was built for that.
Thanks again for your help today

 

[deepender]

Sounds like there out of phase. So the swap the pos/neg from one of the pickups should cure that.

That was my thought.

 

[deathworlder]

Thank you Birdsofprey, I reversed the wires or polarity on my neck pick-up and I now have my fullness back when both Humbuckers are engaged.
Its weird because both pickups are Seymour Duncan 4 conductor hook ups, so in theory they should be the same, I just don't know?
I've heard that some guitar manufacturers (Ibanez i think, in a system identified as "RWRP" ) , have the middle pickup reversed. I'm wondering if the secondhand, but unused, Seymour Duncan 59 was built for that.
Thanks again for your help today

You got Peter Green-ed

 

[show_a_little_faith]

You got Peter Green-ed

Oh well

 

[rcsrich]

No worries man- first time I wired in the two 57/08s I swapped into my S2, I got them out of phase. No biggie.

 

[Argus_Floyd]

Thank you Birdsofprey, I reversed the wires or polarity on my neck pick-up and I now have my fullness back when both Humbuckers are engaged.
Its weird because both pickups are Seymour Duncan 4 conductor hook ups, so in theory they should be the same, I just don't know?
I've heard that some guitar manufacturers (Ibanez i think, in a system identified as "RWRP" ) , have the middle pickup reversed. I'm wondering if the secondhand, but unused, Seymour Duncan 59 was built for that.
Thanks again for your help today

If you pull out a compass and check the North or South magnetic reading of each coil on each humbucker, i believe you will find that one of the two humbuckers has opposite magnetic polarity of traditional, which is:

Neck outer coil: south
Neck inner coil: north

Bridge inner coil: north
Bridge outer coil: south

The humbucker whose two coils are opposite of above, is that way because the bar magnet on the bottom of it has been flipped opposite of its normal orientation. And when that is done, the electrical polarity also reverses per coil. So green wire is now the cold wire and black wire is the hot wire, at least, for that pickup to remain in phase with other pickups whose bar magnets are in normal orientation.

There are benefits to this reverse orientation of the magnet in pickup, and it'd actually done intentionally often when two hukbickers are bought as a set.

That benefit would be, if you decide to coilsplit each pickup and run either the two Inner Coils active at the same time, or the two outer coils active at the same time, they will be hum-canceling. When normally the two Inners and two outers on a non-set approach of Neck and Bridge humbuckers would not be hum-canceling. (to be hum-canceling, the two coils need to be opposite magnetic polarity from each other. If you look back at the list I wrote above of normal magnetic polarity per coil, you will see the two inners and two outers can't be hum-canceling because both are the same magnetic polarity (inners normally both North, and outers normally both South).

So, "it's a feature, not a bug"

But I would agree with the argument that there should have been some up front disclosure in the information provided with the set of pickups.

 

[Argus_Floyd]

If you pull out a compass and check the North or South magnetic reading of each coil on each humbucker, i believe you will find that one of the two humbuckers has opposite magnetic polarity of traditional, which is:

Neck outer coil: south
Neck inner coil: north

Bridge inner coil: north
Bridge outer coil: south

The humbucker whose two coils are opposite of above, is that way because the bar magnet on the bottom of it has been flipped opposite of its normal orientation. And when that is done, the electrical polarity also reverses per coil. So green wire is now the cold wire and black wire is the hot wire, at least, for that pickup to remain in phase with other pickups whose bar magnets are in normal orientation.

There are benefits to this reverse orientation of the magnet in pickup, and it'd actually done intentionally often when two hukbickers are bought as a set.

That benefit would be, if you decide to coilsplit each pickup and run either the two Inner Coils active at the same time, or the two outer coils active at the same time, they will be hum-canceling. When normally the two Inners and two outers on a non-set approach of Neck and Bridge humbuckers would not be hum-canceling. (to be hum-canceling, the two coils need to be opposite magnetic polarity from each other. If you look back at the list I wrote above of normal magnetic polarity per coil, you will see the two inners and two outers can't be hum-canceling because both are the same magnetic polarity (inners normally both North, and outers normally both South).

So, "it's a feature, not a bug"

But I would agree with the argument that there should have been some up front disclosure in the information provided with the set of pickups.

If you do the same inspection of PRS stock pickups in a PRS model that has coilsplitting as a stock feature, you would similarly find that one of the two pickups has the opposite magnetic polarity per coil. That's also due to that pickup's bar magnet being oriented opposite of normal, and it's been done for the same hum-canceling benefit as described in my last post.

The reason the PRS guitars set this way are not out of phase with each other, is PRS has already reversed hot and cold wires on one humbucker . You can see this if you remove the back cavity cover and see that the color of the Hot wire on one humbucker, is the same color as the wire being grounded on the other humbucker. And vice versa.

 

[JasonE]

The reason the PRS guitars set this way are not out of phase with each other, is PRS has already reversed hot and cold wires on one humbucker . You can see this if you remove the back cavity cover and see that the color of the Hot wire on one humbucker, is the same color as the wire being grounded on the other humbucker. And vice versa.

This isn't always true. It really depends on the pickups and when they were made. A good example is the 57/08 pickups. They were being produced magnetically in phase for a good while. At some point PRS changed how they are made and they added more wires to them and flipped the magnet on neck or bass pickup. When wiring up the newer pickups in a two humbucker guitar you have to swap the hot and ground on one of the pickups or you will have a weak out of phase sound when running both pickups together.