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DIY Stompboxes => Building your own stompbox => Topic started by: Somicide on February 08, 2004, 04:07:02 AM

Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: Somicide on February 08, 2004, 04:07:02 AM
Hey, anyone have any idea (I'm sure you do) on how to wire a push/pull pot in my guitar to make a coil-split or whatever (make a HB a single coil in terms i can understand)?  I really hate having 3 HBs.
Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: RDV on February 08, 2004, 04:16:10 AM
http://www.stewmac.com/06wiring.htm

It's all in here.

Regards

RDV
Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: Somicide on February 09, 2004, 02:02:26 AM
Many thanks.
Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: aron on February 09, 2004, 02:40:49 AM
Make sure you try series/parallel as well if your humbucker supports it!  8)
Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: Xavier on February 09, 2004, 03:54:32 AM
Quote from: aronMake sure you try series/parallel as well if your humbucker supports it!  8)

I fully agree. I have been doing that mod to all the guitars I've had so far.

1. The effect is almost the same as simply splitting the coils
2. It will cancel the hum too !!! this is the best thing about it
Title: OT, Splitting HB pickups
Post by: Mark Hammer on February 09, 2004, 09:48:38 AM
The difficulty with "splitting coils" on HB pickups is that the sound drops considerably in volume, and you get hum.

A more elegant solution is the one adopted originally by PRS, and now adopted by many others, of linking coils in separate pickups for a "thinner" sound.  This involves identifying those coils on the various pickups that would be reverse-wound/reverse-polarity relative to each other.  I can't speak to the magnetic orientation of your own pickups, but as an example, this could be the neckmost coil of the the neck pickup and bridgemost coil of the bridge pickup.  That pair of coils may, in combination, constitute a humrejecting combination because of the way they are wired and the orientation of the magnet.  This will yield a less thick and more "open" sound, but without the substantial volume drop and hum-drenched sound of simply cancelling a coil in one pickup.

Since Stewart-MacDonald also sell the types of switches that can accomplish these assorted "PRS" combinations, I suspect they also have the wiring diagrams for them as well.