Polarity in Single Coils

[Rodc]

Yes. Looks like the braid’s been soldered on last, making it difficult to remove the baseplate. You’d have do desolder the lead wires first, which isn’t that easy a job. You might do it with a solder sucker, but desoldering braid might be better. Even so, a big risk of the wires still being connected by solder if you pull them, and those coil wires are easy to snap.

I think the risks outweigh the benefits here. If you mod anything, mod the bridge pickup.

After a think about it I bit the bullet and went for it Simon. I said to myself, this could be a $75 lesson if I stuff it up.

First up I took the screws out of the base plate. That gave me a bit more room to get in with the soldering iron. I un-soldered the braided earth wire from the plate then. I carefully moved the plate done to snip the earth wire from the coil which was just hanging in there. Before I got a chance it snapped off on the underside of the plate.
On a closer look the hole where the solder joined the earth winding around the pickup to the small piece of braided wire that snapped was full of wax. Very, very carefully I used the soldering iron to melt the wax cleaning the tip as I went.
Tinned a bit of wiring heated up the solder mound on the top side of the plate a little and pushed the tinned end of the wire into the solder mound.
Put some shrink wrap on it and then ran the earth wire and the hot wire to opposite holes in the plate so they would lock and not break at the soldered joins.
I made up a earth wire with a round connector and used one of the plate screws to secure it. Swapped the magnets around and somehow after all that it worked!!

Thanks again Simon for the ideas..