Sometimes you feel that your guitar plays nice and all, but it's boring to play... When you plug it in, you can never find a really nice tone with your amp, pod or whatever...
Well the solution is here: An easy way to bring new life to a guitar is changing pickups.
But beware.. You will become a wiring junkie, always on the look out for new pickups, and an improved tone...
But this is not why I made this thread in the first place. I get carried away here, sorry...
If you swap pickups, you need to wire 'em in, right? So why not do a coil swap split mode!? It's not much more work to it if you're soldering pickups anyway.. A few more solder points, that's it..
So, you ask yourself, in disbelief. "Why should I bother, I don't need a cail swop spit mode, or what ever that name was?"
You may not know it yet, but sure you need it...
Imagine this:
You have a 2 humbucker guitar with a 3-way switch and 2 controls(1 volume+1 tone, or as me, 2 volumes). You can choose 3 different settings with the switch. Bridge, bridge+neck, neck.. Enough for you? OK, stop reading this and go back practicing yer Muris-lesson!
For you still here, this is how it's done: Change the 2 pots for 2 push-pull pots, do the coil-swap-split mod when you solder, and you will have 9 different settings in your axe... You can keep the 3-way switch, you don't need additional switches, and you don't need to carve or route anything in your guitar... You could say, this mod give you 3 options in each of the 3 positions of switch: 1) Use normal humbuckers, 2) Split the humbuckers to singlecoil mode 3
) Add 2 virtual hum-canceling humbuckersTHATS RIGHT! This mod gives you 2 extra humbuckers!! (Ok, they're virtual, but they function excactly like humbuckers. 2 coils, humcanceling, in phase and everything...) Aint life sweet?
So, this is what you will get:
Both push-pull down, 3 switchpositions:1. Bridge humbucker (hum canceling)
2. Bridge humbucker in parallel with neck humbucker (hum canceling)
3. Neck humbucker (hum canceling)
(This is the normal operation for a 2 humbucker guitar, without push-pulls or other switches)Neck push-pull up, (bridge push-pull doesn't matter her, since the neck push-pull is "master"), 3 switchpositions: 1. Bridge stud coil (not hum canceling)
2. Bridge stud coil in parallel with neck stud coil (not hum canceling)
3. Neck stud coil (not hum canceling)
(This is the normal operation for a 2 humbucker guitar, with 2 push-pulls that splits the humbuckers)Bridge push-pull up, neck's down, 3 switchpositions:1. Bridge stud in series with Neck screw coil (hum canceling)
2. (Bridge stud in series with Neck screw coil) in parallel with (neck stud coil in series with bridge screw coil) (hum canceling)
3. Neck stud coil in series with bridge screw coil (hum canceling)
(Now this is where the magic comes in! You split the humbuckers as in the above, but, you can swap the coil and put them in series with the other humbucker's swapped coil, and vice versa)The best result you will get if you have 2 different types of humbuckers in bridge and neck, for example a ceramic magnet in one, and a Alnico in the other...
I tried this with a Duncan Full Shred set, so both buckers are of the "same type", but still I get some different tones to play with...
I found this mod over at the Duncan forum, but had to make my own schematic, which includes, a 3-way miniswitch, 2 volumes and no tone... You can do this mod if you have 1 volume and 1 tone too. Or if you have additional tones or volumes you can do this and more things, but then we're just confusing our brains.. THere are other schematics to be found, if your setup is different. Of course you need to consider wire colors if the pickups are not Duncans... And if you have 2 different brands of pickups, you need to check polarity and wiring direction for hum-canceling to work as it should...
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This post has been edited by ztevie: Dec 19 2008, 02:55 AM
ztevie I'm A Wiring Junkie! Tip For Those Who Dare... Dec 18 2008, 11:18 PM
