January 06, 2015 3 min read
It can be a frustrating experience when installing new pickups to find out that your brand new Jazz Bass bridge pickup has now made your bass sound distant and tinny. That’s a sure sign that you have phase issues.
What do people mean when they reference the phase of a pickup? In phase and out of phase sound very different, but what exactly does that mean? Being mindful of phase is important when swapping pickups.
Phase is defined as the timing and direction of the swing of the soundwave. This is usually pertaining to conversations including at least 2 coils. A single coil cannot be out of phase with itself. Think of a horse pulling a cart. If two horses are pulling a cart in two different directions, The cart will not move in either direction. The cart will move, but not where it should. If they both pull in the same direction, the cart follows. So you have to get your horses in order to get moving.
Now if your pickups are out of phase, you will lose volume on the fundamental note. The harmonics are slightly different from each other on any point of the string, so you will hear them more because they aren’t cancelling out like the fundamental does. On a pure sine wave, like a synthesizer note, you can cancel out the sound entirely. This is how noise cancelling headphones work.
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