software

Here's the set up. A Humbucker in the bridge position and a Single coil in the neck position. I want to coil tap the HB and have the SC in paralell. The wiring's no problem. I know how to do that.

My question is:
Does the SC have o be RW/RP?

It will depend on which coil of the humbucker you select. Unfortunately, I can never get it straight in my head which. Where's Kent?

Artie

Okay.

So, a Telecaster is this way. One of the pickups is RW/RP?

It only has to be RWRP relative to the humbucker coil it will be used with. Which is just another way of saying what Artie said, I guess.

As for the Tele, assuming both pickups are single coils, probably one of them is RWRP. One way to tell if you don't have a polarity tester is to plug the guitar in and stand next to a TV set or some other 60Hz noise generator. Choose one pickup with the switch (doesn't matter which) and then flip the switch to the middle position. If there's hum with one pickup but not with both, one of them is RWRP.

If you do have a polarity tester, then if one reads north and the other south, one is RWRP.

Technically, they are both RWRP relative to each other, but whatever wind and polarity combination Strat middle pickups have is what is generally called quot;RWRPquot;, at least from my experience. I'll snag my polarity tester and check the polarity of my Strat middle and tell you tomorrow...

You can use a compass to check the polarity of the pickups. Bring it slowly toward the polepieces (top of pickup) and look for whether it points North away from the pickup (indicating north polarity) or North toward the pickup (indicating south polarity). The RWRP pairing must have opposite polarity. With the HB, I assume you'll have to identify which coil is the opposite polarity of the SC pickup, and then wire it so that coil is active when the HB is split.