pickup polarity problem

[gck]

I've a set of three Fender delta tone pickups and, like for all newer single coil pickups, the middle pickup is "reverse wound with reverse polarity" (that's what the sheet that came with them says).

My question is the following: for the bridge and neck pickup, the coloured wire goes to ground whereas the white one is "hot". Does that reverse polarity & reverse wound thing mean that for the middle pickup, the ground side is the white wire and the "hot" is the coloured? Or does "reverse wound && reverse polarity" somewhat "nullify" each other so that white is "hot" and coloured is ground again? I'm very confused and would greatly appreciate help!

The reason why I'm asking is because I want to use a wiring scheme I got from the internet for which I must know what wire is hot and what is ground!

[ESP_Viper]

Unless those are your stock pickups, those pickups should have come with a color code for the wires. But, I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that all 3 pickups share the same colors for wires. You can email fender's tech support just to be safe.

[gck]

Those are not my stock pickups, I got them seperately. However, there's no color code, just a wiring diagram for standard strats in which the coloured wires all go to ground... however, I probably will email fender's tech support, I hope they'll answer :)
thanks

[ESP_Viper]

Well, if there should be two or three wires comming off of each pickup. I am guessing you have 2 wires and the shield. The hot goes to your switch or knob (depends on how it is wired) and the ground and shield get soldered together to the ground of the guitar. I don't know the color code for fender pickups, so I can't help you with that. The other possibility is that each pickup has just a hot lead and a shield, so it's the same as before, hot to switch or knob and shield to ground. I just installed 3 pickups this past week, one in my guitar and the two in my rhythm guitarist's guitar. I am glad I am not a guitar repair man! I would say follow the diagram that you got with the pickups, unless you are trying some weird wiring.

[gck]

well, I'm going to do some "weird" wiring, using a Fender Superswitch and 2 two-way switches, and another one to turn string grounding on/off so that I can protect myself whenever I play in places where I can't be sure about the quality of amp and power source (don't want to shock myself!).

Well, what I've found out so far is that Fender Delta Tone pickups have the following color codes for the wires: white is the hot end, blue, red, yellow are the ground wires. Grounding is of different colors so that you can distinguish the pickup positions: blue is neck, red is middle, yellow is bridge.

The middle pickup is reverse wound AND has a reverse polarity, so red is STILL the ground and white is the hot one, but the pickup has a "South" polarity whereas bridge and neck have "North".

So when you have a wiring diagram without color codes (which just says something like "neck + goes here, and neck - goes here", you will STILL use red for ground and white for hot on the middle pickup, even if the pickup is revere wound: if you switch the leads (in which case you would have "reverse wound, same polarity", you would get a thinny sound because your pickups are out of phase then....

Conclusions: that's how I understood the things I found about fender pickups on www.mrgearhead.com and with www.google.com.
For me, it doesn't really matter because my wiring diring already features ALL combinations of series and parallel, out of phase and in phase wiring, so I could basically wire it with using arbitrary color codes for + and -, it would only change my switch positions!

[ESP_Viper]

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that since the magnet of the pickup was reversed polarity that they'd reverse the polarity of the wiring on you as well. They would always keep the hot lead the same color. Good luck with your wiring.