Taking on wiring.
I am trying to understand broad concepts about pickups. I am going to make a list (in no particular order) as statements of my current understanding. I'm using online diagrams too. Please, grade my paper. }}}}} NOTICE, THESE ARE NOT INSTRUCTIONS, DO NOT FOLLOW THESE STEPS. {{
1. Single coil. Two wires, a hot and a ground. Seems simple enough.
2. Humbuckers, both regular and hot rail. Basically, 2 singles wired together. A two wire humbucker gets treated just like a single coil.
Multi-wire humbuckers (with coils combined) is (almost?) like wiring a single coil.
Split coils get treated like two separate single coils, wired normally to vol/tone/jack..
3. P-90, soap bar, dog-ear, as single coil
I have no active pups, and doubt very much I will ever build multi-pups. If/when I split coils, they will probably wired B-Both-N, The way I see that is B is a single coil, N is a single coil, and Both is both wired in (crossed fingers) parallel?
Right now gonna wire up a 2-wire humbucker per diagram.
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Jason Lollard talks about this in detail on his blog:
https://www.lollarguitars.com/blog/2010/07/left-handed-guitar-picku...
There is no such thing as a left handed pickup. : )
Hi, sorry Blue Rat, but there are left handed pickups believe it or not. They are normally single coil pickups that have staggered pole pieces, so the correct height pole sits under the same strings as a right handed guitar.
Taff
Try this trick. Draw out a single coil pickup with all six strings on a piece of paper. number each string. Now put it net to your body and strum it like an air guitar. Without moving the paper take your left hand and start to strum. The pickup is the same.The only thing that's changed is the direction of the strings. It's the same pickup. :)
Hi, Seymour Duncan have left hand pickups with staggered poles, the correct wire configuration is the only difference.
Taff
They're not making a different pickup. All their doing is reversing the bottom plate so it points in the right direction. If you take my example and draw different pole heights you'll see it's the same pickup. I"m guessing they do this because without reversing the bottom plate the bridge pickup wont fit on a standard cut left hand body.
Actually they need to reverse the bottom plate on all of them. That way they'll fit in all the standard routing for a fender. Personally I like the 'swimming pool' rout. All you would need to to is get a different pickguard if you wanted humbuckers on your strat.
slight pedantic correction. each coil is actually only 1 wire. the "ground" side is usually the start of the wind and the "hot" is the other end of the wire after approx 8 thousand winds .
a humbucker is two single coils side by side mostly but some are stacked . as Taff said either the magnets are different orientation for each wind or the direction of the wind is different . ie wind in same direction one has north up the other south up . if coils are wound i clockwise and the other anticlockwise the both coil magnets are either north or south, it doesnt matter as long as they are the same.
https://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/i-2105/i-2105.pdf this has a list, after acouple of pages, that shows how many winds are on different brand pickups. F type and G type etc...
Multi wire humbuckers. Because almost every manufacture uses different colors it's best to follow their instructions.
As far as the rest of it you got it.
If there are three single coil pickups the middle pickup is usually reversed wound. This is what gives Fender it's quacky sound. You can use all three pickups by themselves for three builds. They will all sound normal. The only real difference in the pickups is the bridge. It is made to be louder. Because there is less string vibration close to the bridge.
Hi, don't forget that to make a humbucker buck hum, one coil is wound north/south and the other south/north.