1963 X-175 Pickups Out of Phase?

Greetings all,

I just took delivery of a 1963 X-175 from the original owner, a marvelous 80-year old gent that used the guitar to play in a traveling Mariachi band. Great mariachi mojo.

After extensive cleaning up of pickups, pots, etc., I'm pretty certain it sounds out of phase when both of the humbuckers are on. It's exactly like the out of phase sound made by a Fender Duo-Sonic when switched to that setting.

Is this what Guild intended? If not, since the guitar appears unmolested and unrepaired, any ideas as to where things might be haywired, or suggestions for the easiest fix? Would swapping and resoldering the wires at one of the pickups do the trick, or is that a dangerous place for heat?

Also, when cleaning the pickups, I noticed that some of the pole piece screws were longer than others. Any reason for this? Was it anticipated, or set up by the factory, to have some pole pieces staggered when set about right?

The guitar plays like a dream and cleaned up beautifully.

Many thanks for the help, gang.

Bill Stagg
1960 T-100
1963 X-175

out of phase

Guild often wired them out of phase. Your guitar is most likely wired the way it was when it left the factory. Jay Pilzer

Jay,

Many thanks for that information. Two questions: Do some folks rewire the guitars to put them in phase? If so, what's the proper or best way to do it?

Ok, one more question: Did these guitars have a ground wire for the tailpiece, given the wooden bridge? If they were wired out of phase, is a grounded tailpiece necessary?

Many thanks!

Bill Stagg

No, seriously. I'd like to hear from you owners of X-175s to know if your guitars were/are wired for in-phase or out-of-phase operation when both pickups are on. If you changed the wiring from "out" to "in", I'd appreciate knowing how you did it.

Seiously.

Thanks, all!

Bill
1960 T-100DP
1963 X-175 Manhattan

Hey Bill, great to have someone aboard not afraid to dig in & make their guitar work for them!

I'm sure there are some, but the X-175 owners I'm aware of on the forum have the single coil Franz pickups & wouldn't be much help to you.

I'll do some asking around & try to find someone with similar setup to stop in here.

I have a mid-70s X175 and the pickups were not out of phase. If they left the factory out of phase, someone changed it.

I briefly had a mid 60's Starfire IV, and it came to me with the pickups out of phase - when I took the pickups out to rectify the problem, it was obvious one of the covers had been unsoldered earlier, so the previous owner had purposely put the pickups out of phase (flipped the magnets), probably a Peter Green fan.

Say Walter,

If the pickups are wired properly, that is, according to the schematic, for in-phase operation, but they are performing out of phase, does that mean the magnets are reversed? Should I be looking to realign the magnets rather than rewire the guitar? That might explain why I've now made the pickup cover for the rewired bridge pickup "hot" and am now getting a buzz. Electronic, that is.

Many thanks for the help on this!

Bill

Hey Bill, I'm really not sure - I know that there are two ways to reverse phase, one is flipping the magnet(s), the other is reversing wires, but I'm not enough of an electronics whiz to tell you what to do - I just mess with the things until they work...

Ok, Walter, I'm going in. My guess is that the magnets need to be reversed so that the ground connected to the pickup cover is consistent with the other pickup. If you smell smoke over there, you'll know something went wrong.

BTW, I really enjoyed listening to the Seatsniffers video clip on YouTube. Great tone on that Guild!

Bill

phase

My understanding is that you reverse the wires on one pickup. That should put them in pahse when both are active. I have never sone it, but that is what I have been told. A local guitar tech should be able to tell you.

Eureka! I now have a ’63 X-175 with in-phase two-pickup operation and no buzzing or hum issues. Many thanks to everyone for your help. Here’s the deal:

The pickups were indeed wired at the factory to be out of phase. The telltale sound is thin, lower in volume and very “quacky.” The secret to changing this over to normal in-phase operation is to reverse two wires at the pickup, but it makes a difference which two wires are swapped. The correct wires are the two coming from inside the pickup (leading from the coil winding) and terminating on a solder tab affixed perpendicular to the back plate of the pickup. One terminal of this tab is grounded to the back of the pickup and, hence, the metal cover. If you instead switch the two longer wires that run from the outer end of this solder tab to the pots, you’ll end up connecting a hot wire to the pickup cover. That’s what was causing the buzz when I would touch that pickup.

Bottomline: Swap connections on the two small wires coming from inside the pickup.

Loving the sound, and quiet as a mouse.

Thanks, everyone. I love this forum. Happy picking!

Bill Stagg
1960 T-100DP
1963 X-175 Manhattan (In Phase)

Very nifty. Billydlight, is that likely to get something like the same effect as reversing the poles on one pickup?

I owned a '67 SF XII a while back with the small Guild humbuckers. It was wired out of phase. I assumed it was a stock wiring intended to add a little more twang to the jingle of the 12-string.

I like the option of a out-of-phase switch on guitars that have a volume control for each pickup- you can adjust the level of one PUP to get a bit of the out-of-phase tone without getting too much of a nasal tone. If a single master volume control is used, like a X160 Rockabilly, and the PUP's are wired out -of-phase the sound is too thin for my taste.

I added an extra volume control, wired like an attenuator (50 % to 100%) on the middle PUP of a S-70. Made it a lot more useful with the middle PUP and out-of-phase selection. Made a few more wiring changes to allow selection of the neck + bridge PUP's along with the middle PUP. This modification added the featured tone of the magnet pole reversal sound (i.e., rich bell like harmonic tone with just the right amount of upper frequency rolloff). The S-70 now has a wide range of tonal characteristics. (Also added a Guild Bigsby, similar to that used on the early '70's S100 Deluxe to top it off!)

Reversing the Magnetic Phase has a substantially different sound when compared to reversing the Electric Phase. Electric Phase reversal ideally cancels out the sound. The effect is similar to the way a speaker, out of its infinite baffel, sounds- very thin with no low end. Ideally the entire sound should cancel out. However at upper frequencies the wavelengths are a lot smaller and they become directional which prevents perfect cancellation at the upper band. A similar effect occurs with the pickups.

I believe a humbucker pickup is basically two single coils in electric phase, with magnetic poles reversed and with the single coils wired in SERIES.

The classic rich bell harmonic tone most often associated with combined single coils, is two single coils in electric phase, with magnet poles reversed and with the single coils wired in PARALLEL.

A Guild guitar that offered a wide range of stock tones was the limited run 3-PUP SF4 model that came out of the Nashville Custom Shop a few years back. (There is one currently listed on gbase.) The middle P-90 was out-of-Magnetic phase with the neck and bridge. It was wired up to have the standard pick up selection switch to select the neck, neck and bridge (in-electric & in-magnetic phase) and bridge PUP. A mini 3-position switch was added and provided 3 additional layered combinations: A) standard neck,neck + bridge, bridge, B) A + Middle (in-electric/ reversed Magnetic) and C) Middle PUP only. This switching combination is a lot more effective at tonal combinations when compared to the push-button 3-PUP X-350/375 approach.

I also like to mess around with wiring combination. However I avoid doing to Guilds of substantial value.

matsickma

matsickma said:

The classic rich bell harmonic tone most often associated with combined single coils, is two single coils in electric phase, with magnet poles reversed and with the single coils wired in PARALLEL.

Click to expand...

This, like all your other posts, is magic information. It's that sound I'm looking for, and that's why I'm sitting with two Franz pickups waiting for ancient Guild. But I'm not at all clear how one would wire pots and a three-way switch for two pickups in parallel. WHere might I look for a diagram of same?

Walter, I can't lay my hands right this minute on the drawing you sent me earlier. Would I be right to presume that that showed the pickups wired in series?

Hi John,

I think what you are trying to do is a little easier than all stuff I went through in explaining pickup configurations. Since you are working with single coils already once you put the pick-up selecter switch in the middle position the PUP's are (almost always) in parallel. Only the magnet poles of one PUP needs to be reversed.

I think you simply want the Billydilight version (which is really all that most of us need). Billy basically decided to disassemble one of his Franz PuPs and flip the magnet. I haven't had the guts to mess with the ones for my Aristocrat. Billy, on the other hand is knee deep in Franz PUPs and CE100D's and was willing to make the modification.

A while back Billy had a post about the Franz mod. We need his help in laying out a step by step approach to the Franz magnet pole reversal. Hopfully he can include pictures of the steps along the way.

John, I think you need to contact Billy for his invaluable know-how in modifying the magnetic pole of a Franz pickups. We'll all be paying attention.

matsickma

Billy gave us this great info:

Hey there, I always pot my pickups and reverse the polarity. It completely cancels any single coil noise in the middle position. The way to do it is take out the NECK pickup out. Slightly loosen the screws on the bottom of the pickup that hold the plate on, gently push the Magenets about halfway out. Pull each magnet out one at a time and turn it 180 degrees so polarity is reversed. If you played it now the pickups would sound out of phase. Then you revese the leads on the pickup so the what was the hot is now the ground. Now the pickups are back in phase and hum cancelling in the middle position. The reason you do it on the NECK pickup is that its unlikely the strings will hit the polepieces there and ground out your signal. It REALLY kills the hum. Smiert will tell you. No hum.

That was in the earlier thread Mounting Franz Single Coils

I was wondering if the parallel setup you suggested was different from/complementary to this (lovely) trick.

john_kidder said:

Walter, I can't lay my hands right this minute on the drawing you sent me earlier. Would I be right to presume that that showed the pickups wired in series?

Click to expand...

Hey John,
No, it's a totally regular wiring diagram with the pickups wired in parallel in the middle switch position.

Series wiring adds up the outputs of the two pickups and can be fun on guitars with very low output, bright pickups, (vintage double pickup Danelectros were wired this way) but I think it would be a bassy, distorted mess on a dual P90 hollowbody.

I agree with Walter. Series would not sound right with Franz's on a Guild.
Anyone a little hand holding with the potting/mag flipping/humbucking excercise, feel free to PM me. I will walk you through it. It seems a little scary at first but it is well worth it! BTW I have gotten early Guilds that came stock out of phase as well ones that were stock in phase as well as ones that were stock humbucking in the middle position. So I would say that Franz probably did not really know or care about which way the magnet polarity was going when they made the pickups.

Thanks guys. This is wonderfully helpful.

How can you tell that my experience with thse here old-fashioned analague devices is limited? Anyone need a little machine code for a synth-computer interface?