A BRIEF DISCUSSION OF WIRING OPTIONS - Deaf Eddie

Pickups wired PARALLEL/out of phase still both have their own paths to hot andground, but on ONE of the pickups, the leads are reversed. The tone produced is thin andnasally, and usually has perceivably less volume than other pickup combos. Meterreadings cannot determine phase - the reading for the circuit is that same asparallel/in-phase.Pickups wired SERIES/out of phase still require the current to flow through both coils,but (typically) the positive leads are tied together, and one coil's negative lead goes tohot, and the other's is then routed to ground. The advantage of the SERIES/out of phasetone over the parallel/out of phase tone is that because of the fact that the coils are wiredin SERIES, the output is louder, and therefore a better match in volume with the commonparallel in-phase tones. In other words, you don't get as much of a drop in gain when youswitch to out of phase if you are using a SERIES connection. This would be a goodoption to get some out of phase tones out of a Strat, without getting too thin. Again, meterreadings cannot determine phase - the impedance reading for the circuit is that same asseries/in-phase.