Stack Plus Pickups Polarity ????'s

[slurrp]

So I'm pretty much dead set on buying a set of Stack Plus pickups for my strat, but I'm confused as to why SD only offers the "Classic Stack Plus" with a reverse winding. If I order, for instance, a set of two vintage hots, and then one custom for the bridge, can I flip some wires and get a reverse polarity middle?

I called the company about this and whoever it was I talked seemed to have no idea how the stack pickups even worked or why I was asking about this.

Anybody have any experience with this?


Thanks.

[frankfalbo]

Many companies including Dimarzio don't even have a reverse polarity stack. Duncan did it with the middle Classic Stack in the event you want to split in 2 and 4 positions. The Hot, Custom, and Vintage Hot all work quite well with the Classic in the middle, if you wanted to split. But if you want the Vintage Hot in the middle, and you want to split, you have to order a Shop Floor Custom RWRP version. You can't rewire it because the magnets also have to be flipped. Of course if you're not coil splitting them it makes no difference, each pickup is as quiet as can be since they're all individually tuned.

[jumble jumble]

Does splitting the stacks to combine them affect "quack" at all? Or do you get just as much running them both in hum-cancelling mode, in parallel?

[slurrp]

Thanks for the info Frank. I don't plan on using the pickups split, but it's nice to know I could if I wanted.

However, what I really want to know is what jumble asked: I understand that with a complete set of stacks, I'll have hum-cancelling in all positions. But will I get, in the two and four positions, the same style of tone I'd get from a typical strat with a RW/RP middle? I asked about the polarity of the pickup because when I've wired two adjacent pickups on my strat with the same polarity, the result was a really thin, bright sort of quality that wasn't what I was looking for.

There must be something I don't understand about the whole system that's befuddling me. Anyway, thanks for your help, and any other info you have would be appreciated.

[ArtieToo]

Does splitting the stacks to combine them affect "quack" at all? Or do you get just as much running them both in hum-cancelling mode, in parallel?

Thats a great question. Do we really need to mess with splitting when dealing with the new stacks?

[frankfalbo]

Splitting to the top coil for the in betweens will yield slightly more quack. But in the grand scheme of things it's not that big a deal. The bottom coil loads the top coil a little, which translates into a slightly flattened resonant peak. In the in-between positions, it's a little bit like "twice the loading" but in reality there's not much difference sonically.

[ArtieToo]

Thanks Frank.