I used to work in numerical modeling – a computer algorithm approximating an ideal equation approximating a physical process. One of my best papers demonstrated that for decades other Ph.D.s had been using approximations that produced non-physical results even in the ideal equation for ground water flow. The approximations violated the min-max condition for elliptical equations. And all it took was a simple 3-point test; which I developed because it was hard to understand and I wanted to make sure I did.
Never take anything for granted. Demonstrate to yourself that it actually works as advertised. Never take a press release as proof. If someone claims a guitar does something, ask for the test methods and results.
For example, I worked up about 72 pickup circuits for two humbuckers and a single that could potentially produce unique humbucking tones. But I know from my own tests that the more pickups you use in a circuit, and the closer together the pickups are physically, the closer the tones are likely to be. So, one should expect that a number of those 72 potential unique humbucking tones are going to be so close together as to not count. How many? That remains to be tested.
One time, I put two different humbuckers 1½ inches apart, center-to-center, one from a Fender Bullet and an economy distortion humbucker from Allparts. I twirled a plain steel string over them, and looked at the coil signals on an oscilloscope. Instead of seeing the same signal, they had unexpected phase shifts, even between signals from the coils on the same humbucker. This was back in February, so I don’t remember exactly what happened – just have the notes.
But the problem went away when I removed one of the humbuckers. It seemed that just having the magnetic field, mass and coils of the second humbucker may have done it. It suggests that if the pickups are too close together, then the fields interact in such a way that even when humbucking pairs work to buck hum, the ideas of in-phase and contra-phase signals may be a bit flexible in ways that can affect tone.