SE HBII Piezo: is there a way to invert piezo phase?

[Sashmd2k]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum.

I recently purchased a PRS SE Hollowbody II Piezo, which I really like, but the stock 58/15 "S" Pickups were too hot for my taste for a hollowbody guitar.
So I swapped them out for Humbucker sized P-90 style pickups (Lollar Novel 90), now I really love the magnetic pickup sound of that guitar.

However, now the magnetic pickups are out-of-phase with the piezo pickup, so the blend tones sound weird.
=> Is there any way to invert the phase of the piezo pickup?

Unfortunately, the P90 have "vintage" braided shield wiring (= just one inner "hot" lead, and the "ground" outer shield that is also connected to the pickup cover)... so I can't just swap the pickup wires.
Well, I have tried, that fixes the phase, but at the price introducing of terrible hum/noise ... ;-)

The original L.R. Baggs "Ctrl-X" piezo preamp (which I assume the HBII's piezo board to be based on) actually has a dedicated phase switch to adjust phase when retrofitting a piezo, but of course not the custom board in the PRS...
I have tried the obvious and swapped the piezo connector wires at the piezo board, but that again seems to just short the piezo's "hot" to ground...

(My last resort would be to mechanically take apart the pickups to invert the magnets, or just to buy new pickups with shielded 2-conductor wire, but I would like to avoid that ...)

All ideas are much appreciated!

 

[Lacire]

Hello, I see this is your first post so welcome to the forum. This maybe obvious but you can really change the output of any pickup by lowering it, out of curiosity did you lower the stock 58/15 "S" pickups before you changed them out?
Before I’d swap the magnets around I’d check to make sure the pickups are out of phase. I’d use the two dedicated outputs (piezo and magnetic) and run two cables out, one through a direct box or amp with phase reversal and see if it corrects what you’re hearing. If you don’t have access to this at home, I’d take my guitar to a local music store where they’ll have something with a phase reversal switch that you could play through. I have an older two channel SWR California Blonde amp and some various older tube amps, for convenience I do combine the pickups using only one cable but if you want to get everything out of the piezo, you really need two amps, a dedicated amp for only the mag pickups and an acoustic amp for the piezo. Good luck.

 

[Sashmd2k]

Hi, thanks for the reply. Good ideas, but I actually have already tried both.
I lowered the pickups height and also tried coil splitting them, which I liked better, but I just really love P90 sounds in general.
Maybe I mean "compressed" when I say "hot". The 58/15 "S" pickups are afaik slightly overwound, while PRS core models get underwound 58/15 "LT" pickups for the hollowbody models, which reportedly have more clarity...
I have access to an acoustic amp with a phase switch and tried running the two outputs in two amps. There it sounds indeed much better when the phase on the piezo is reversed.
(Besides, the neck P90 was already very obviously out of phase with the original magnetic bridge pickup, when I had swapped out only the neck.)
I totally agree that the piezo really wants a proper full-range amp, but sometimes still would like the option to blend in some additional "sparkle" from the piezo, without carrying a second amp.

Btw, the acoustic amp's manual refers to the phase reversal switch as a way to reduce acoustic feedback (without notch filter). Do you think that PRS intentionally wires their hollowbody models with reversed phase for feedback resistance?