Freddie King Reissue ES-345 Pickups

I was wondering why the bridge pickup screws point to the neck. Will you still get an out of phase sound with the varitone? What was Freddie King looking for by turning bridge pickup? Did he want to get "inphase"? (Hope that wasn't a dumb question).Looks?Gibson doesn't really explain it. Can't find anything on net. You guys will know. Looks like a nice guitar. Thank You.

The Freddie King signature 345 is a very faithful re-creation of his original 1960 model. The only incorrect part is the truss rod cover with his name on it...the original would have read STEREO, of course. This was only added at the insistence of his estate (family) for contractural licensing agreements in the use of Freddie's name. Don't know why the pickup orientation was reversed in Freddie's original, probably just his personal taste at the time, but regardless, that is the way the guitar was received at the factory when it was time to duplicate it, and so they did. Freddie's signature re-creation is also correctly wired in stereo, like the original guitar was from the factory. Each pickup is wired to send its own signal to a separate channel, or separate amp, using a special stereo output Y cable (supplied with the guitar), just as the factory did with all original stereo/Varitone 345 and 355 models. The current 345 models have the Varitone, but are wired mono, to use with a standard cable. The original neck and bridge pickups were wired out of phase from the factory, and it is common for players of vintage 345s to flip the magnet in one of the pickups, so there is no signal loss due to phase cancellation when using both pickups (middle selector switch position) at the same time, with a standard cable. The Varitone itself has nothing to do with phasing, but uses a choke for each pickup and a rotary six position knob with various value capacitors, "thinning" out the sound and output progressively as the switch goes through each position. Merely turning around the pickup so that the pole pieces are oriented 180 degrees has no effect on the electrical phasing of the pickups. Hope this helps....

Thank you reddeluxe. I was not sure if the pickups were out of phase or King flipped the magnet so it was in phase.

reddeluxe said:

...The original neck and bridge pickups were wired out of phase from the factory,...

Click to expand...

The pickups were not wired OOP but were magnetically OOP. The magnet of the bridge pickup is flipped north to south (the long way, top to bottom) on the stereo Varitone equipped Gibson instruments. The neck pickup from one of these instruments is a regular unaltered humbucker. The flipped magnet puts the two pickups magnetically out of phase.

Because each pickup goes to either a separate amp of channel, you will not notice the pickups being OOP as they each have their own output that is not electrically connected.

TMI, you are exactly right! Please forgive the mistake of confusing the Magnetic polarity (why the magnet has to be flipped) with Electrical polarity.

Thanks.