While pickup polarity can seem daunting to understand, it’s actually quite simple: a pickup will either “Push” or “Pull” the speaker when it’s signal gets there. If two pickups are out of phase and their signals are combined (think middle position of a Telecaster), one pickup is trying to “push” the speaker, while the other “pulls” the speaker.

This “Tug of war” results in the Out of Phase tone, which sounds thin, brittle, and nasally.

Identifying your pickup’s polarity can be a bit tricky, but is still quite simple to understand. All pickups have two things that will determine it’s polarity: Wind Direction and Magnet Polarity.

Humbuckers and Hum Cancelling pickups have Both Magnet Polarities in them (a humbucker has a North coil and a South coil). So, all you need to worry about with a Humbucker is getting one with Reversible Leads, like a 2-Conductor or 3 Conductor lead. If you have a Humbucker with reversible leads and you experience an out of phase tone, simply reverse the leads and you’ll be back in phase.

Single Coils are a bit trickier – so we’ve written an article on that subject here – check it out.