Considering flipping my pickups

[IEatCats]

I'm thinking about flipping my pickups (so that the Low E would be at the High E).

I've always wanted to try it, because I know Hendrix's tone was based on this reversed pickup sound. Does anyone know if it would be worth the work? Would the tone change be that noticeable?

[Gunner Recall]

There's a difference...not always huge though. Depends on the pickups/guitar I guess.

The humbucker in my toronado is "backwards" and I love it.
I've never done a side by side of the way it sounds installed correctly so I can't really compare (I love the sound of that guitar too much to mess with it).

[IEatCats]

There's a difference...not always huge though. Depends on the pickups/guitar I guess.

The humbucker in my toronado is "backwards" and I love it.
I've never done a side by side of the way it sounds installed correctly so I can't really compare (I love the sound of that guitar too much to mess with it).

I play in Open C, and have an odd mix up pickups, so I think it might really help my tone, by rounding out the unnaturally low strings. I'll do it and do a side by side comparison, for the fuck of it.

[Achtane]

Isn't that the same as mirroring the polepiece height (at least, in pickups with adjustable ones)? Or does it actually change something?

[IEatCats]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think so. I guess it depends on the pickups, though.

[Noise...]

It'll depend entirely on the pickups. It's an easy thing to try, so I'd say go for it.

[IEatCats]

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/archangel1024/pickup-flip[/soundcloud]

Nothing extreme, but I feel like everything sounds a little crisper, and I need to get rid of my middle pup, because it sounds terrible. Random Vintage output pup in the middle

EDIT: After playing around for a while, I was right, it did tighten the sound of the lower strings. A+++++ Would flip again

[kaeth]

A+++++ Would flip again

First it's good, and now you wanna flip it back? I'm so confused!

[dubkitty]

the effect really depends on the type of pickup. the Hendrix effect is the result of the reversal of the "stagger" of the fixed poles of Strat PUs. when you rotate a humbucker 180º the effect is to move the polepieces which are closest to the strings farther away from the harmonic nodes (occurrence points), which changes the tone significantly. Ted Nugent used to claim that this inhibited feedback when using his hollow Gibson Byrdlands. don't mistake this for the Peter Green mod, though, which also requires reversing the bar magnets under the coils of the neck PU which is the only one flipped. if you're using an EMG-style PU with no exposed pole pieces, i don't know what the effect would be. I wouldn't expect any major effect from rotating a P90 or Telecaster PU; there's probably some difference when flipping a Dynasonic or other single-coil PU with the polepieces along one side of the PU.