This has been popping up on other guitar boards, & it's starting to really bug me.

A member starts talking about doing his own mods on an s-s-s Strat.

PAUSE: Will, would it be a huge hassle to assemble a FAQ page on this site? I've noticed there's lots of homebrew fans who have no first clue what "s-s-s" means!! Or the difference between a "Stratoclone" & a "Partscaster." Or that an Alembic-type multipiece body IS NOT "plywood." Or why "true bypass" is desirable. Anyway, just a thought -- I'd be willing to contribute stuff, & to try my hand at writing definitions for terms.

Anyway, so we've got three single-coil pickups. Except for the early years, a Strat has the middle pickup reverse-wound -- three-pickup Teles seem to do this as well, but don't quote me. As a result, when you put the switch into one of the two-pickup positions (standard wiring anyway), you get a humbucker effect that drops out a bunch of noise, albeit not as much cut as a true HB.

But the noob I mentioned says proudly that he's bought three identical pickups, & turned his center pickup 180 degrees & jammed it in.

What's dismaying is that nobody else says a discouraging word.

For those playing along at home, this isn't the same as "reverse wound." A coil wound clockwise will still be clockwise, no matter how you spin it.

Sure, if you turn a standard bar magnet 180, you reverse the poles. But unless I missed that class, Fender-type pickups don't contain a bar magnet, so turning it around does nothing except maybe mess up the cavity.

I'm just now starting to hack on pickups. I've done some basic repairs & rewiring the feeds, but that's it. So is it kosher to peel the bobbin off, turn it over, & glue it down again?

This makes me smile. Perhaps noob turned the middle pup *upside down* and stuck it in. That would take care of windings and polarity. ;-)

Perhaps the reason for the similarity in sound in the 2 and 4 positions between standard and reverse wind is it those tones are more about the phase cancellation happening due to the position of the pickups relative to each other rather than the polarity/wind direction? Also, I'm pretty sure the reason the 2/4 position of a strat isn't as loud as a standard humbucker is a humbucker's coils are in series while the strat 2/4 positions are parallel. Wire a humbucker parallel and you get less output as well.