Is there industry standard polarity between pickup brands?

[AndyPanda]

I was recording some different P-bass pickups to compare - and I noticed in my DAW that some of the split P-bass pickups were reverse phase compared to a different brand. They are in phase with themselves (both halves of the split are the same) - and it's a P-bass layout so no bridge pickup - nothing to be out of phase with - so no problem - but I was surprised when I noticed that between brands they were different.

I have several split P pickups on various basses ... Duncan, Yamaha, EMG all phased the same - Barden and MIM Fender were reverse from the Duncan, Yamaha, EMG.

If I were to add a bridge pickup, I would definitely make sure the two pickups were in phase with each other ... but isn't there an industry standard between brands for this? (or is this a ploy to get you to order P-J sets from one company so you know they will work?) The Barden is wired black to ground and white to hot per pdf on Barden's site - the Duncan is wired black to ground and white to hot per diagram on Duncan's site.

I mean if I play the same note, the same way on each of those basses and record it in my DAW, this is what I see between two different brand pickups. In this particular picture, the Barden on top and the Duncan on bottom:

So far I've tested several stock Yamaha, one Duncan, one EMG (all the same polarity)
and one MIM Fender and one Barden (both opposite of the Yam/SD/EMG)

 

[AndyPanda]

Guess I'll answer my own question. I found this at SD's website (this is about strat pups where the middle pup is supposed to be reverse, but I think the main point still applies here):

If you’re using pickups from the same manufacturer it’s pretty straightforward to match wind and polarity. They are all designed to work together. A Seymour Duncan single coil pairs perfectly with a Seymour Duncan RWRP single coil. Unfortunately, this is not true if you mix and match pickups from different manufacturers. One manufacturer’s idea of a standard single coil might be another’s idea of a RWRP, and vise versa.

The most common scenario in which the above comes to bear is when combining Seymour Duncan single coils and Fender single coils. It all started when Seymour decided to base his single coils on the original Fender single coils from the 1950′s, which were south, top going. At some point in the 60′s, Fender decided to change their single coils to be north, top coming. The end result is that Seymour’s regular pickups are equivalent to Fender’s RWRP, and vise versa.

 

[walterw]

the answer is "pfft, i wish!"

everybody wants to be different, and wants use their own wire color codes on top of it.

 

[uOpt]

No, not even within Seymour Duncan it is consistent.

Fender historically changed polarity. SD for the mainline pickups followed Fender's original polarity. So SD and Fender are different polarity.

However, the Antiquity pickups follow the polarity that Fender was using at the target time period, so the *later* model SD Antiquities are same polarity as later Fenders but opposite early Fender and all other SDs including the early Antiquities.

In addition old Fenders did not have RWRP for multi-pickup guitars and basses but that is common now. So by definition half of those pickup sets have the other polarity.

 

[RobbieK]

IME, I've found there's more pickups that are negative on pull-off than positive, but this is not any type of standard at all. Buy that I mean that when you place, say, a small screwdriver on the top of the pickup, you get a negative voltage as you pull it up.

In practice, as you've found, you only need the pickups to be in phase with each other on a particular guitar. And these days it's rare to find a pickup that you can't easily swap the polarity. If you work on any older instruments with metal pickup casings especially, these can be fiddly to change the polarity.