Perhaps a stupid question but I ordered black hardware with my LP-1MQ kit. The PU's do not have the screws in the polepieces as you would see in the chrome or gold version.
Looking at the PU's already installed in the PU rings, I assume that when I put the rings (with PU's) in their cavity as they should be (looking at the angle of the PU rings and the lenght of the wires) that the polepieces underneath the black plate are pointing in the correct way. That is: polepieces towards the bridge for the bridge PU and polepieces towards the neck for the neck PU.
But... Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups so is there a way I can check if the PU are correctly pre-installed in the PU rings?
You may not have adjustable polepieces under the covers. Some pickups just have steel 'slugs' in both bobbins.
Look at the bottom of the pickups. If they have adjustable screws, then you should see the screw ends protruding from one side of the base plate. If so, then you can fit them the way you described above. If not, then they are all 'slugs' so it doesn't really matter which way round they go (in fact it doesn't really matter which way round they go at all - Gibson did the' screws furthers away from each other' configuration just for what they thought looked best, nothing technical).
If all else fails, then on the bridge pickup, the lead normally comes out of the end nearest the controls, and the neck pickup, it comes from the end furthest from the controls (because they are all constructed the same way but the neck pup is rotated 180° to the bridge in order to get the screw bobbin facing the neck).
If you are coil tapping, then it makes a bit more of a difference as to which bobbin sits nearest the bridge, but otherwise there really isn't any issue. You can't change the phase of the output signal simply by installing it the other way around.
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