You can call it what you want, but I call it messin' with the Q. Need Help!

[tiges_ tendres]

Is there some kind of way to instead of do a complete coil tap with a switch, to roll off one of the coils of the pick up with a pot in the place of a switch?

[gez]

The Gibson varitone circuits do a great job of getting 'brittle' sounds out of bumhuckers [/Spoonerism].  They can be incorporated into feedback loops to 'activate' them, but this can make them noisy and a little OTT.  Those little audio transformers do a good job of replacing the inductor (see Craig Anderton).

Alternatively, buy a cheap EQ pedal (doesn't Dano do one for next to nothing?)

[Paul Marossy]

Try adding a switch to switch the coils from serial to parallel. This gives more of a "fender-y" sound without thinning it out too much.

That's a good suggestion, too... if you can mod your pickup to do that.

What about the Bill Lawrence Q filter?

I don't know about that circuit, but it sounds like something that could work, too.

[Ed G.]

Reverend guitars have some sort of bass control pot, and it's supposed to be very effective in getting 'bite' out of humbuckers. I've heard nothing but good things about these guitars.

Here's what they say about it:
"The new Bass Contour is a passive bass roll-off, which can go from a slight bass cut, to totally re-voicing the pickups. Passive bass roll-off controls for guitar are nothing new. What's unique is that our control taper and component values were specifically selected, to allow re-voicing of the pickup, not just simple bass reduction. And of course there's a few sneaky-tweaky things I did, that I'm not free to discuss at this time."

[frankclarke]

You can wire your coil tap to use the unused coil as an inductor, so that the tone control cuts bass instead of treble. No free telecaster, though. I think both pickups on in series with a resistor with a treble bypass cap would be useful.

[vanessa]

Wow lots of great suggestions, thank you!

It looks like three are entertaining. In this order.

1. Cap switched in series.
2. Bill L Q-Filter
3. Split the coils series/parallel

The split coils would be easy if mine where already tapped but for me it would be a hassle. It looks like the Q-Filter would yield the most tonal changes, but I'm thinking it could do more. Here's what one speaks of it doing,



"Most humbuckers have a very pronounced midrange. What the Q-filter does, is to "clean this up", which is why some people describe it as changing the humbucker sound to something more single coil-ish.

My ears tell me that what goes on is this:

The filter cuts, by a fixed amount, a selectable frequency range within the midrange to lower midrange frequency register. If you imagine having a parametric equalizer where the Q pot (the width of the frequency range) and the boost/cut pot (the amount of boost/cut, in this case the cut) set to fixed values but the frequency pot being variable within the midrange register, that is pretty much what the Q-filter does."




It looks like if you built one yourself you could adjust the values maybe via trimpot?




...From the Man himself:

"The Q-Filter is an LCR network - a 1 henry, low Q noisefree inductor in series with a .02 micro farad cap in parallel with an 8 kilo ohm resistor. Wired like a cap to a tone pot, you can gradually decrease the impedance of the circuit but maintaining a slightly higher impedance below 1100 Hertz. Also available without the cap and the resistor to gradually decrease the impedance of the pickup."



"The EQ system is the most versatile system to alter the sound of a guitar and can be used for multiple functions. The basic components are a 900mh low Q inductor in series with a capacitor and a variable resistor (tone pot). We used to ship it as a complete pre-tuned unit to replace the cap at the tone pot, limited for one basic function. However, in conjunction with different pickups in different positions, it's much more versatile when the inductor is separated from the cap, like [shipped now]. In the past, this caused severe problems when players used the wrong caps and resistors, especially when the EQ was wired to a switch only. The system must be wired to a control or you totally limit its functions, as follows

http://p082.ezboard.com/fguitarsbyfenderfrm8.showMessageRange?topicID=16.topic&start=21&stop=40

[vanessa]

Would something like that even work to get a single coil "spank" tone? 

[Mark Hammer]

If you stick a compensation cap in the volume pot, a la Tele, but make the cap a higher value, then as you roll down from max volume, it turns into a bass cut control and volume pot at the same time.  A value of 2200-4700pf can result in some surprisingly pleasant bark from a humbucker or P90, without the muscle usually accompanying it.  Not sure if that is what's being requested.

Ideally, this is the sort of thing you implement with a push-pull switch pot sdo tha you can cancel the bypass and have a regular volume pot when you need it.

[jayp5150]

Is the twang created, at least partially, as a side-effect of the scale/string-tension of the instrument?

Honestly, my Tele sounds "like a Tele" even unplugged. so I think it's a combo of the factors of electronics, wood, scale--all that.

All the above suggestions are great--I was thinking of the Varitone myself.

But, I do agree as well with fattening up the Tele. I have a Lil' 59 in my Tele, and it's a chunky beast.

[DougH]

Here's another idea- try another pickup.

I put a pair of GFS Retrotrons in my hollow body and they are like a mix between a typical humbucker sound and a tele sound. They are a filtertron style pickup like what is used on Gretch's and etc. They are typically weaker than PAF/etc style humbuckers, but if you check out the guitarfetish website, they have various models with various signal strengths (and a lot of sound clips).

I like mine because with the guitar volume on 10 and the amp cranked up and/or a decent distortion pedal I get a decent "rock&roll LP tone". Back the guitar volume off to 5, with a 360p bright cap and it gets a beautiful "ring" without sounding brittle like single coil bridge pups can. It rings pretty nice with a clean amp and the guitar volume maxed too. Something to think about...

[Jered]

  Try a Boss GE-7 equalizer pedal. I think you'll find what your looking for. Works great for me.
  Jered

[MartyMart]

  Try a Boss GE-7 equalizer pedal. I think you'll find what your looking for. Works great for me.
  Jered

I must say that I've seen this done many times, for "that certain" tone that you speak of and for "%^&*ed wah"
tones etc etc.
The GE-7 - or similar can be VERY useful and means that you don't have to "hack up" your LP in any way or start
re-wiring for push/pull pots / switches etc etc .
If you go this route, please see my GE-7 mod thread, which removes all the "hiss" associated with a stock unit, it will
only take about 30 mins and makes it a very quiet little fella
( easier to carry one than another guitar too )
MM.

[GibsonGM]

I coil-tapped my LP's bridge pickup, with push/pull switch on the vol knob.  Using the middle postion, with lead vol on 10 and neck vol on 7-8, you get something stratty-tele-like.   
The bridge position alone is really bright, as mentioned above, so I always play rhythm with the neck on a bit, too.   I also have a MIM tele...the tapped LP will not 'spank' as much as a Fender, but it comes pretty close (I play some country with this setup).    I only do that bc I don't like to switch guitars 4 times in a set when people are dancing, LOL.     It's a best of all worlds solution, probably the only 'real' one for what you want to do given that this is a LP, 100 times the opposite of a Tele! 
You could look around and find a MIM Tele from the 90's, I got mine for $100, painted the tortoiseshell pickguard black with Fusion paint and put a new non-rusty bridge on it for $40.   )   The sound comes from other factors, one of which is the LP has a thru-neck and the Fender a bolt-on.

[mac]

normal HB pickups do not sound good or have enough output (or both) when cut to single coil mode, so a coil switch to do single coil on regular HB is out (again my opinion, but one shared by others who have tried).

I agree. I had an epi genesis 2xHB with a factory switch, when used as single coil output dropped a lot, although it sounded very jazzy.

GE-7

+1. After all a LP is a LP, and a Tele is a Tele.

---

You may also consider buying a HB - SC - HB Ibanez-like, 5 switch positions. Not exactly a fender at position 2 or 4, or a LP at 1 or 5, or hollow body at 3. You do not have to tweak or take an expensive instrument to bars where people mostly can't distinguish a guitar from a drum.

mac

[DougH]

The sound comes from other factors, one of which is the LP has a thru-neck and the Fender a bolt-on.

I agree with that. There are fundamental construction differences between LP's and Fenders that affect the sound. You cannot compensate for all of these differences through EQ-ing, coil-tapping, or pickup choice. Any of these ideas will be a "best of both worlds" solution.

[RedHouse]

Try adding a switch to switch the coils from serial to parallel. This gives more of a "fender-y" sound without thinning it out too much.

Try this first, it may do it for you.

[gez]

Here's another idea- try another pickup.

I put a pair of GFS Retrotrons in my hollow body and they are like a mix between a typical humbucker sound and a tele sound. They are a filtertron style pickup like what is used on Gretch's and etc. They are typically weaker than PAF/etc style humbuckers, but if you check out the guitarfetish website, they have various models with various signal strengths (and a lot of sound clips).

I like mine because with the guitar volume on 10 and the amp cranked up and/or a decent distortion pedal I get a decent "rock&roll LP tone". Back the guitar volume off to 5, with a 360p bright cap and it gets a beautiful "ring" without sounding brittle like single coil bridge pups can. It rings pretty nice with a clean amp and the guitar volume maxed too. Something to think about...

Can't remember who makes them, but there's at least one manufacturer who does a humbucker PU comprised of two strat-type PUs (individual slugs for each string).  They're standard size and can be 'coil-tapped' to isolate one of the single-coils.  I think Leo Fender designed PUs based on this idea with that company he had after Music Man (name escapes me...holes in my brain).

[Electric_Death]

Here's the easy answer and IMO, the best based on my own personal results.
Add a push pull pot which will run your pickups directly through a .0052 UF cap and twang away. I've got some green polyester .0012 uf caps I use but they might be too raunchy for your tastes though they also hit the tele sound really well.

The second option, wire one of your pickups out of phase.
When you switch to the mid position, your new peak resonance frequency will be in the upper upper midrange spectrum to treble spectrum and you again get a full on telecaster sound. I did this by a mistake with my first frankenstrat and oddly enough, I then used bass tone caps to tame things and get a gutsy midrange Les Paul tone out of my Strat's 2 and 4 switch positions.
The drawback here is if you have metal covers on your pickups, touching one will make a wall of noise since it's now become your positive lead so it's best to wire the neck out of phase.

Last suggestion, do both of the above only add a rotary switch instead of the push pull pot and wire a bunch of cap/resistor filters on there and now you have a simple, passive guitar modeling circuit. I see digital modeling guitars are slowly growing in popularity but I'll take this old school trick any day. This is where those 12 way rotary switches come in handy. I've built a couple now, one for resistors, one for caps and use alligator clips as the leads. Toy around, figure out which are your favorites, which work best together and which do little or nothing.
For your guitar though, the 6 ways are a better choice because I've found the variety of useful filters with a noticeable difference isn't quite so broad.

[Paul Marossy]

This has been a very interesting discussion. I didn't know there was so many avenues to try! 

[vanessa]

Fantastic ideas! I think I'll start with the simplest and cost effective and go from there.