I wanted to ask a quick question for those who either have a guitar with a built in phase switch or modified one for such. Do you get much use from this setup?
 
I did a full rebuild of my guitar a few years ago (dual humbuckers with coil-cuts) but blew off adding a phase switch at that time between the two humbuckers and am starting to think I may want one now. The spacing between the two furthest coils would be ideal for this and potentially be useful for soloing work, but wanted to get feedback from folks who have this first.
 
I am also debating if a phase switch can be "emulated" properly with EQ (HPF basically), but not tried this yet.
 
TIA

The phase switch makes the change instantaneous....
 
I have a Fender Modern with 3 pups, the bridge pup being a split coli humbucker with a phase switch on it.
 
I use it more to negate the hum than anything but it does change the character of the tone and in the middle of a solo, or a rhythm part with other things playing, the hum is not noticeable.
 
I'm sure you could emulate it with EQ but that's a chore and not easily done in a live situation.

Interesting idea, emulating pickup phase inversion electronically or digitally. I hadn't thought of that before, but it would certainly seem to be do-able with a comb filter.
 
But if I'm right in that presumption, then I wonder why nobody's created a plugin for that purpose. Maybe the effect is more complex than I think.
 
 

Another thought,, I used to have a Rickenbacker bass that had a stereo jack, so each pickup could be recorded on a separate track. With that setup, you could just flip the phase on one of the tracks later.

I have a Carvin that has a built in phase switch. I use it for tone/character. At first I just thought the sound was thin and unusable. But allowing myself to experiment with the setting has been eye opening. There is just a certain type of sound in the attack that I have come to really like. I do use it often. It is different.
 
Suggestion, if you do do it, when you start to play with it, allow yourself about 20-30 minutes with it. Try different styles, clean, overdrive, high gain, and so on. Try working with the tone controls and volume knobs.
 
And I am speaking of a double humbucking style guitar.

I only had to pop off the back plate of the guitar to remember why I had opted to blow off the phase switch. I had chosen to keep the guitar looking as original as possible, and 4 of the 6 switches are in Seymour Duncan Triple Shot mounting rings. I had to route the guitar to put a second in for the neck pickup (originally there was only one hole through the face). I had debated a bit about removing the volume knob, but glad I had decided not to after the fact. Now I am debating about simply putting a DPDT mini slide on the back plate itself, but have to think on that one a bit.
 
Double tracking is one method that would work, but I am not sure my precision is good enough to make this practical. I am actually very curious about the filter aspect myself, since I can easily do a run of double tracking then see if I can come up with a filter to get the same (or close enough) result on the bridge pickup signal alone. I may try this just for kicks because "in theory" it should be fairly simplistic (famous last words).
 
Edit: Google search is already showing ideas, and a link to a Guitar Player article read:
"Out-of-phase pickups. Don’t have an out- of- phase switch? You can come close with a studio-type EQ.
• Select both pickups.
• For the EQ, dial in a notch filter around 1,200Hz with a fairly broad Q (0.6 or so) and severe cut—around -5dB to -18dB.
• Use a high shelf to boost about 8dB starting at 2kHz, and a low shelf to cut by -18dB starting at 140Hz.
• Tweak as needed for your particular guitar and pickups.
• Boost the level—like a real out-of-phase switch, this thins out the sound."
 
I will definitely try the experiment first and see how this works out.

Personally, I'm not a fan of out of phase PU's, but it occurred to me recently that if I high-pass filtered one of the PU's when they were combined OOP it might be more interesting to me (a high pass filter is just an appropriate cap in series with the output, ala many Rickenbacker bridge PU's).
 
And OOP PU's is not something that can be emulated with EQ, unless one was going to EQ every string and every note separately.

drewfx1
 
And OOP PU's is not something that can be emulated with EQ, unless one was going to EQ every string and every note separately.

That's what I was getting at Drew. The character of the PU is what sets the OOP sound apart from just something EQ'd.
 
And like I said, at first I thought that this sound wasn't good. But after allowing myself to experiment with it, I have to say that today it's part of my tools of sound!!
 
[edit]
Oh and I would not alter any good guitar to put in a switch. Nope ain't happening.
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Back in the way-back-when days I had a knock-off les paul copy. I put a dimarzio super-distortion in the bridge position and something else (a Seymour Duncan? I don't remember) in the neck position, then I wired the three-position switch so the pickups were out of phase in the middle position. (I've always had a hunch that the fact that the pickups didn't match contributed to the sound.)
 
If I set the switch in the middle and turned up both volumes all the way, it would give a razor-thin but super aggressive tone, hollow and biting, super trebbly. What was cool though, was that if I backed off one of the volumes just a hair, the tone would fill out, and that biting edge would relax just a little. Back it off another hair and the tone would morph a little more, closer to a straight humbucker sound but still with that hollow bite to it. It's really hard to describe the tonal characteristics, but that middle position became my go-to setting, and I could constantly manipulate the tone, from razor-thin screams to full-bodied moans, with micro-changes to one of the volume knobs. 

Brain May is the only player who readily comes to mind who uses this often. The effect is more audible the further the pickups are from each other (leaving the harmonics from the bridge essentially), and he uses a treble booster in his rig specifically to mitigate the volume drop when OOP. Using different makes of pickups will add to the residuals left over.
 
@ward s, you may have inadvertently given me the "answer" here if I do the physical mod, since I can replace the neck switch itself with a 3-way. Right now the stitches are simple toggles to eliminate any dead spots, and OOP would be best on a serial configuration anyway, so I would only "need" one more setting... plus I can always "go back"
 
@Grem, yeah, this guitar is an old Dean Hollywood (which I love because the neck is so tiny), and was the "fuzzy" guitars used in the ZZ Top Eliminator videos (e.g., "Legs"). I stopped by PRS's shop when in college since I was going to school in that town, and the guy told me not to modify it since it was during "Dean's demise" and most guitars were "on of a kind" as-is during that period. I just chuckled and told him it wasn't playable "as-is." I used this picture after the mod as my avatar for a while, but the only switch I added on the face was the neck pickup switch. The final look on the body was this (I added 5 switches, 4 of which are in the mounting rings themselves, left-side):
 
 
Since only the wood, bridge, knobs and tuners remain as "original hardware" I also took the liberty of scribing my name in the headstock (which makes it funny when out and about because people chase me down to ask what it is). The guitar has been PLEK'd since this pic, so the nut is now new and the string-lock removed.
 
 
 I will try to get the double tracking experiment done this weekend for sure, since that data will provide a lot of insight into the grand scheme of things.