Official Luthiers Forum!

A customer dropped off this old homemade looking guitar (could be an aria or a vantage) that has been gathering dust for years, it needs some new guts.

Pretty standard layout, 2 humbuckers, 3 way toggle, 2 volumes, 2 tones, jack, and a DPDT switch for splitting the humbuckers. The only thing I'm unsure about is the coil split toggle. I've never done one of these before, but I understand the circuit (at least I think I do.)

I wired it up and plugged it in. Everything sounded great and as one would expect until I got to the in between spot on the 3 way switch. Then the tone went thin and nasally. Switching the coil split switch does exactly what I expected but just makes the in between sound even thinner. In the middle position slightly rolling one volume off solves the problem. From what I've read online this is exactly what people love about the Peter Green "mod". Not so usable for me. And the customer wants it back to normal.

I wired it up like I would a les paul, or other typical two humbucker guitar, than used the coil split wire coming off the pickups to go to the DPDT switch which feeds one coil from each pickup to ground. The other quirky thing I'm not used to is that these pickups only have 3 wires, instead of the typical 4. A red, a white, and a bare. The white wires measure 12.5k, the red ones about 6.25k. I'm assuming the manufacturer has already combined 2 of the wires, like a person would normally do on a 4 wire pickup.

Everything seems to be pointing to one of the magnets in the pickups being out of phase. But how common is that? I get that it could be common when mixing brands of pickups, but both pickups look like they come from the same manufacturer. I guess maybe someone in the past already rotated one of the magnets to get that Peter Green sound? Anything's possible on these pawn shop specials. But I would like to discount any other possible causes before taking a pickup apart. Another thing I may have done wrong, I sent a ground wire off both sides of the DPDT switch and grounded them to one of the volume pot casings.

I've read a typical solution for out of phase humbuckers can be to just switch a couple of the wires around, but again I've only got 3 wires not the usual 4.

If I do need to rotate the magnet, what I've seen online points to the magnet that lies flat under the center of the pickup. Is this right?

Flipped the magnets on the neck pickup. It was a bit of a trick, they were glued in, and I only expected to be dealing with one magnet. All is well now. Still pretty weird, I guess this is just what the guitar sounded like years ago when it was working. Oh well, I guess if it happened to the pickups in Peter Green's '59 burst, it can happen to anyone.

Sounds like you had the "Peter Green mod" done on the original pickups or it was just designed that way.

I’d flip the red and white wire on one pickup to see what happens.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Yeah I tried that first, but it basically turned the coil split switch into a kill switch. These pickups only had three wires, a bare ground, then the white wire which read 12.5k, and the red wire that read 6.25k. So when I switched the wire's it ended up sending the whole signal to ground rather than just one coil.

Yeah I think so. I can understand why someone would choose to do that on purpose, but I don't think anyone not expecting it would like it.

Yes, it just dawned on me this was the case.
I was gonna delete my comment.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah