(This has been mentioned before on this thread, but it's good info for SF fans.)
Warning! Going to School!
With the RicRiot mods going on, as well as seeing these 3-4 decade old SFs starting to fail and needing replacement, here's a way to insure you get the right pickup for the job. TBH, I just don't get how these fail, the coil is encapsulated in epoxy, so it's
seemingly indestructible, but I did have one SF fail on a Foundy and
@XsoGol took that corpse and had cleaned out and rewound, so it's a real issue we will now face with our beloved pickups.
This post pertains to the 'regular/small magnet' SF, not the ones used on the T20/1st Gen Fury-which look the same from above, but have
huge magnets as evidenced by the massive, iceberg-esque appearance of what it going on under the water level, er... pickguard. I have no info on the big magnet SF, as I have never had one in my possession to test and meter. I would theorize that the T20/Fury SF were all wound to the same spec as the smaller ones, but would have way more inductance being that they used more magnetic material. However, I theorize that they are all wound with the same wind and polarity since they were used as single pickups in both bass applications, but I dunno...
The small magnet SFs used in the Foundations and Dynas are all the same size and wound pretty much the same. They tend to meter out somewhere around 5.2-5.4K and the inductance is also right in the same tight ballpark from each other. If one had cork sniffing, golden ears, one could choose the pickup with a higher resistance and higher inductance for the bridge position, but to be honest, it's not worth it. It's best to choose the bridge pickup because it has a shorter lead on it vs the longer lead on the neck pickup. A simple adjustment of pickup height makes a much more noticeable difference for dialing in the bridge and neck positions to personal taste.
The only thing that is different among the 'small magnet' SFs is that they come in two polarities/two winding directions. The easy specification to find out is whether the magnetic field is North up or South up. These two magnetic polarities also have a fixed winding direction from each other-one goes clockwise, the other counterclockwise. I don't know which one is CW vs CCW, because they are encased in epoxy and therefore the secret is sealed. (Only someone that has successfully opened one up, has the engineering plans, or wound them in Meridian would know for sure.) This is how one gets RW/RP hum canceling when used in pairs with the same volume knob/resistance settings.
You can easily know you have a RW/RP 'set' if the faces of the pickups magnetically attract each other. Simple as that.
The other thing is that Peavey used red and black start/finish wires on the coil, but didn't differentiate this with the RW/RP coils. Most companies now use a standardized wiring color code for 'hot' or 'ground,' however, this wasn't such a thing in the 80s, apparently, as I have found this same thing with my Gotoh made Ibanez single coils from the same time frame--the wires are color coded for start/finish, not phase/polarity. Hooking up a proper RW/RP pair, in phase, requires using black as hot on one, red as hot on the other. Yes, the golden eared cork sniffers could potentially hear the tonal and grounding difference on which wire is the start wire (near the bar polepiece, inside of the coil) and which is the finish wire (on the outside of the coil) and choose the preferred wiring for lower grounding noise based on that, but IMO, it's also not horribly important. They are still single coils and will have noise, but as many have found, they are pretty darn quiet for single coils!
Marking them Neck and Bridge is great if they are already wired to a harness from the same instrument or have different lengths of lead wire that would make one believe they are a set.
There are no guarantees...
On a nerd level: the better way to mark SFs would be by magnetic polarity. N up/S up is easy. For example, when I did the RicRiot, the factory pickup was N up. I had a spare SF, but it was also N up. I installed it to see how this project/theory sounded. I really liked what I heard and was then inspired to find a S up pickup so I can get the hum cancelling benefit. When I have purchased orphan SFs (particularly with polarity in mind), I have had to talk EVERY seller through this. It's easy to find out. A simple, magnetic compass will suffice. Place it over the pickup and see how it reads.
Here is an example with my Parts tele (Fiesta Red parts tele--I call it "Party") with RW/RP single coils and a cheap keychain compass. I built this 20 years ago with used parts found in my drawer and from ebay. The pickups are GFS Hot 60s Alnico in the bridge and Dream 90 in the neck. Chosen because it was a used set of pickups for $20 shipped, way back then. These are known to be great sounding pickups. The bridge pickup is VERY nice.
The neck pickup is
attracting N, so it is "
S up."
The bridge is the opposite, attracting S, so it is
"N up."
The polarity came into play again when I decided to change the neck pickup on this guitar to a guitar Peavey Super Ferrite. I cannibalized a RW/RP set of guitar Super Ferrites off of an 83 Patriot guitar found locally for a smoking deal for my covid furlough project: a 27" baritone Strat build I call "Barry Covidcaster."
FWIW, the same reason we love SFs on bass apply to the guitar SFs: they have a huge, extended bandwidth, medium-high output and moderately agressive tone that is easily dialed back with the onboard volume and tone controls. Much more similar to a G&L MFD Jumbo Single vs a Gibson P90. Perfect for a baritone, you get the big bass and clarity vs the mid push of a P90. Besides, this has an onboard mid boost if I want that P90 push. Plus, both Barry and Party have really trick wiring-which include parallel/in phase, parallel/half out of phase and series/in phase options, so pickup polarity and phase is key to proper humcancelling performance as well as the thicker tones and simulated Strat "quack" out of two pickup guitars.
Just as with RicRiot, searching for that orphan SF took a while for Party. I had to inform the sellers to check the magnetic polarity, as I needed a "S up" SF for my tele. It was eventually found, installed and worked and sounded perfect! Plus, the sellers all learned something along the way. I have noticed these sellers now post a pic or mention the magnetic polarity on their ads now.
FWIW, I put my removed GFS Dream 90 neck pickup and a parts drawer Mean 90 (which was also a matched, RW/RP set) I had laying around in the Patriot and sold it for a non-original deal of a price. It actually had a more rock n roll tonality to it with these pickups.
I was killing that poor drummer
... Ive always assumed they were the same, just in different positions.
