It's not just some silly phase I'm going through

Guildedagain

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The phase switch on 70's Guilds is an incredibly powerful tool, and because of the pickups fighting each other, canceling each other out, you can get an endless variety of tones as simply as rolling the neck pickup volume back a little, it's night and day. You can do the opposite by rolling the bridge pickup back, the tonal palette is staggering. It's far from a one trick pony if you experiment.

In the history of Les Pauls, there were a couple legendary guitars for having out of phase middle position, Peter Green's Les Paul with a flipped neck pickup magnet that ended up being Gary Moore's, and Page of course, who had the ability to reverse his pickups and split his coils, but yet somehow Gibson never really gave it out to the public, to this day, it's "Jimmy Page" wiring, as if it was proprietary, but Guild did.

These honky tones work really well with over the top overdrive and endless sustain. You're playing all four coils at the same time, like a huge pickup, with all of these tonal quirks on tap.

The in phase position has more might but is kind of a wooly drag without any of the cool artifacts of being out of phase. The interplay between the knobs doesn't exist.

All the same, switching back and forth makes for good contrast.

Coil taps are ok, but only diminish tone, not augment.

The phase switch is a mighty sonic weapon, it's not just some silly phase I'm going through.

 
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Rambozo96

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I have yet to find a splittable humbucker that does a convincing singlecoil sound. Usually a very lackluster middle ground between humbucker and singlecoil. I added a phase switch in my old Ibanez ST-50 but never found it of much use. Sounded like a gutless version of the bridge pickup but I am willing to bet the kind of pickups used out of phase may yield different results. Like how some pickups play nice with each other and how some go together like chocolate and onions. I also recall some people debating the tonal differences between magnetically out of phase coils vs electrically out of phase coils.
 

Rambozo96

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But at the time I did that phase reversal switch mod I really don’t think I knew much of the nuances of tone. I rarely touched my volume and tone controls and ran excessive amounts of gain. I had just now learned the magic of a properly build Fuzz Face or any other property biased fuzz and varying the volume control to go from slightly overdriven to a full blown fuzzed out sound. I’m quite shocked the NS S-100 lacks a phase reversal switch. I don’t know if the 90’s reissues had them or not though.
 

GAD

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I played a Guild S300AD through high school and beyond and always thought the phase switch was stupid. Today I think it's wonderful.

Yes, the '90s reissues had them. My '97:

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GGJaguar

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Some G&Ls have phase and series/parallel switches. I'll occasionally use the latter, but to this day have never found a use for the former.
 

HeyMikey

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Is this the same type of phase switching that is on the Nightbirds? What models have this type of phasing?
 

GAD

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Is this the same type of phase switching that is on the Nightbirds? What models have this type of phasing?

Yes. The only other way to change phase is by flipping the magnet in one of the pickups.

It was an option on dual-pickup guitars so I’ve even seen it on a recently mentioned Starfire VI.
 

zulu

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I agree. The phase switch on my Nightbird offered an interesting tone option when both pickups were selected by the three way toggle, but when I replaced the toggle with a knob - a world opened up. All the "in-between" positions - where both pickups are being used but one is louder-have different and interesting tones out of phase.
 

Guildedagain

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Anyone notice the song has an unusual and very cool hollow body bass solo, Cherry red, probably a Gibson but could be a Starfire, nice tone.
 

HeyMikey

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Veering... It’s a great acoustic song, equally nice on 12 string. I do it 2 half steps down for the vocals.

Stripped down...

 

Rambozo96

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I agree. The phase switch on my Nightbird offered an interesting tone option when both pickups were selected by the three way toggle, but when I replaced the toggle with a knob - a world opened up. All the "in-between" positions - where both pickups are being used but one is louder-have different and interesting tones out of phase.

You talking about a blend control?
 
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