Pickups out of phase on Ibanez AR325QA

[Feral Feline]

After installing the new pickups in my friend's Ibby, I wired it as per how I found it.
Well that meant both of the toggles didn't work in one position.
I spoke with Tonerider and got some good feedback and managed to resolder the switches and get them both working as they should, however...



When my friend tried it, he noticed that with the master switch set to both pickups, the pups weren't in phase.
I solicited Tonerider's advice once again, but the company never got back to me about what I might do to fix this out-of-phase problem.


The way the guitar was wired stock was not the way Ibby's circuit diagram online showed how it's supposed to be.
Wired the way Tonerider recommended, the pups work with the mini toggles as they should (parallel, split-coil, series); but as mentioned on the master they are still out of phase when both pups are engaged.

So I colourised the schematic and I'm trying to work out if: is it as simple as flipping one of the pups hot wires (red and white), or what...?






*ALSO, my friend wants flat toggle-bats and I'm having a helluva time finding a parts supplier that has the FLAT-BAT TOGGLE TYPE 2 ON-ON-ON ...
not at Tayda, Stompbox Parts, Small Bear...

Mind, I haven't tried big guns Mouser/Digikey/etc yet.


I don't have much experience with soldering within the confines of control cavities — it's tight, the wires are short, the Tonerider wiring is little and brittle with cheap insulation... a perfect scenario for a melt-down and if you look too closely you'll see a few.

So I'd like to find the FLAT toggles and only have to wire this sumbiatch one last time...

 

[MichaelW]

After installing the new pickups in my friend's Ibby, I wired it as per how I found it.
Well that meant both of the toggles didn't work in one position.
I spoke with Tonerider and got some good feedback and managed to resolder the switches and get them both working as they should, however...

View attachment 32107

When my friend tried it, he noticed that with the master switch set to both pickups, the pups weren't in phase.
I solicited Tonerider's advice once again, but the company never got back to me about what I might do to fix this out-of-phase problem.


The way the guitar was wired stock was not the way Ibby's circuit diagram online showed how it's supposed to be.
Wired the way Tonerider recommended, the pups work with the mini toggles as they should (parallel, split-coil, series); but as mentioned on the master they are still out of phase when both pups are engaged.

So I colourised the schematic and I'm trying to work out if: is it as simple as flipping one of the pups hot wires (red and white), or what...?

View attachment 32108




*ALSO, my friend wants flat toggle-bats and I'm having a helluva time finding a parts supplier that has the FLAT-BAT TOGGLE TYPE 2 ON-ON-ON ...
not at Tayda, Stompbox Parts, Small Bear...

Mind, I haven't tried big guns Mouser/Digikey/etc yet.


I don't have much experience with soldering within the confines of control cavities — it's tight, the wires are short, the Tonerider wiring is little and brittle with cheap insulation... a perfect scenario for a melt-down and if you look too closely you'll see a few.

So I'd like to find the FLAT toggles and only have to wire this sumbiatch one last time...

Easy fix since these are 4 conductor pickup wires. Just reverse one set of the hot pickup wires.

Think of them as terminations for the windings. So reversing one set will reverse the North South magnetic orientation and put them in phase while in parallel.

Everything else should stay the same. (And "should" work correctly for all the other settings)

Edit: To be clear, do it at the master toggle switch NOT at the pickup, you don't want to be f'ing with the windings hahaha.

 

[Deperduci]

also, I'll try finding it but I read somewhere about a magnet flip to cause the phase thing, intentionally. might be an assembly plant goof. try the wire swap 1st, that doesn't work switch it back and pull 1 p-up apart, gently and turn the mag over.

 

[Feral Feline]

Thank you both.


@MichaelW Thanks for the Edit, but ... the hot pickup wires don't reach the Master. Both sets of pups' hot wires terminate at an on-on-on toggle. So I'll make the hot-flip at one of the on-on-on toggles.


I'll re-examine the pic I took of the original wiring (not sure why, the original pickup wires don't colour match to the new Toneriders), and compare that to how it is now to decide which pickup I flip the hot wires on.



Still looking for a flat bat on-on-on type 2 (Mouser doesn't have what I want and what it does have are crazy $$$).

 

[MichaelW]

Your buddy is swapping out the Ibanez Super 58's for Toneriders? That's a downgrade imo.
Those were some decent pickups from Ibanez.

 

[Feral Feline]

He likes the Super 58s, but they aren't original early-year types, this is a newer Made-in-China guitar — I'm a little fuzzy on the details, he explained it to me once but my retention is like catching water through a fishing net — and the net's since dried out.

 

[MichaelW]

Ahhh ok, yah the earlier Japan made Super58's were very sought after back in the day. I haven't played a recent Ibanez semi hollow in quite a few years but they've always seemed like decent guitars. I was looking at the lower priced Schofield pretty hard when I wound up getting the Eastman instead.

 

[HamishR]

I googled and found these: https://www.philadelphialuthiertool...t-paddle-toggle-switch-3-way-on-on-on-chrome/

and https://guitarelectronics.com/double-pole-on-on-on-flat-handle-mini-switch-chrome/

I have bought from Philadelphia Luthier Tools before and they're legit.

 

[Feral Feline]

Awesome!

Thanks very much Hamish, exactly what I'm after.

 

[Feral Feline]

Okay, so I finally got 'round to installing the new switches. I swapped one of the switches hot-wires (red&white).
Old switch on the left, new one with swapped hots on the right...

I then swapped over the other old silver switch to gold flat-bat toggle as well, flip over the guitar and you have:

So, the one with the swapped wires in the above pic is the one on the right, right?

I plugged it in, all pickup positions worked, and there was no noticeable volume drop on the the master-toggle pickup selector's middle position.
So I figured I was done, everything works and the pickups appear to be in phase — and so I delivered the guitar to my very patient friend.

NOW the neck tri-sound switches series/single/single instead of parallel/single/series.

I've had it with these new pickups' crap brittle wiring & their cheap insulation and the fact the company went dark during round one — just say "We don't know what you're doing with our pickups, without the guitar here to look at we can't say what you've done wrong." Saying "we can't help you anymore than we already have" is better than ghosting the customer.

I'm fed up with the headaches from trying to get this all to work as per original when the wire colour-coding from Ibanez doesn't match up with modern standard practice of most replacement pickups.

Since the guitar is no longer in my possession I cannot check for cold solder joints. A former bandmate of his who repairs instruments for a living is going to take over, we both think this is best in terms of getting it sorted in a better time frame, but now it will cost my friend money. However, I still want to understand what's going on here, or the whole exercise is a waste of my friend's time and mine if I've learned nothing.



SO, any guesses what I did wrong this time?

 

[MichaelW]

Yah, the problem is too much trick wiring and switching. Put in a couple of good humbuckers, 50’s wiring, use the vol/tone knobs, done.

 

[Feral Feline]

That'd be great for me, but my friend likes all those Tricky options.

 

[xefned]

I've been through this nightmare—two different brands of humbuckers with different color wiring schemes—with coil taps on each humbucker and a phase switch. I do not envy you.

I had to watch many videos and learn how to determine each wire independently.
The big sucker punch was learning the north-facing coil isn't always the one you think it is and can't be determined by the direction the wires stick out. Hope you figure it out. Good luck!

 

[Feral Feline]

I've been through this nightmare—two different brands of humbuckers with different color wiring schemes—with coil taps on each humbucker and a phase switch. I do not envy you.

I had to watch many videos and learn how to determine each wire independently.
The big sucker punch was learning the north-facing coil isn't always the one you think it is and can't be determined by the direction the wires stick out. Hope you figure it out. Good luck!

Thanks for this insight!

Maybe I'll swap the hots back the way they were and try swapping the hots on the other switch. If my friend lets me try it... I'm sure he just wants his guitar back and working as it should; he's been very patient letting me, the quack doc, try to operate on it.

Part of the problem is I kind of need to wrap my head around the whole thing again from scratch. By the time the switches arrived and then by the time I had a hot minute to solder them in...

 

[xefned]

In the odd chance you have an old-school compass, it can be used to tell which direction is up. I used the screwdriver and multimeter method and found the neck DiMarzio I bought was the opposite of what I expected from the cover colors.

It's nice of your to help your friend. As nice-guy DIYers, we spend a lot of our free time re-wiring things for people for free. Hopefully you can find a way to fix it without rewiring the whole thing!

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

When I rewired my Chibson Res Paur, I built a wiring jig so I could wire up most of the stuff outside of the control cavity. The jig is a piece of plywood with holes drilled in the correct positions for the pots, switches & jack. I did the full-on Jimmy Page wiring mod with push-pull pots for coil split, phase and series pickups.

 

[jimilee]

When I rewired my Chibson Res Paur, I built a wiring jig so I could wire up most of the stuff outside of the control cavity. The jig is a piece of plywood with holes drilled in the correct positions for the pots, switches & jack. I did the full-on Jimmy Page wiring mod with push-pull pots for coil split, phase and series pickups.

I have some jigs I. The shape of a strat for when I was rewiring mine. I need a Les Paul jig for when I take out the circuit board and put in real stuff.

 

[MichaelW]

Wiring jig phooey……you haven’t lived until you’ve put a hot soldering iron down in an f hole of a $2300 semi-hollow…….

 

[Feral Feline]

So to wrap up this long-winded tale — the tail was wagging the dog.

The instrument was given to somebody who repairs guitars for a living, and thus ¢harge$ for it. Here's what he did:

He swapped the red & white hot-wires on the one switch back to when I got the mini-toggles correctly functioning, the way I originally had them.​

Then he performed a complete setup ...





I wired it correctly, the pickups never were out-of-phase.

 

[xefned]

So your friend just thought they sounded out of phase?
I hope he now appreciates that you did it correctly all along!!