Being a big fan of unbalanced coils, I like to either use hybrid PU's or spin-a-splits whenever possible these days. I'm going thru my guitars and converting some with single lead HB's over to spin-a-split and thought of a shortcut and tried it tonight, that makes it simple and quick to do on a single-lead HB. You don't need to rewire the entire PU to 4 lead, and you don't need to take any wires off the volume pot. The process takes minutes.
The PU
- Remove the cover, and pull back the tape covering the wires at the one end.
- There's a wire that runs between the two coils. On Duncan 4-lead HB's, these would be the red and white wires. Carefully take the little piece of tape off that the covers that splice. Don't yank on it.
- Take an insulated wire, long enough to run from the PU to the tone pots, usually 12-15" for neck PU's, shorter for bridges.
- Solder that single wire onto the splice of the wire connecting the coils together, and put the little piece of tape back over the splice. All you did was add one more wire to the existing splice, so that you can have access from the pots.
- Put the covering tape back over the coils.
- I just ran that single wire down one leg of the base plate, and the cover fit back on fine.
The Wire
- Run the wire thru the hole/channel in the body to the controls. In some guitars you'll need to lift out both PU's to do this, in others you won't. I did it to an LP neck PU, and didn't have to lift the bridge PU out, because LP's have a big channel inbetween the PU's for all the wires.
Convert the Tone Pot to a 2nd Volume Pot
- Remove the capacitor and cut the hot wire coming from the volume pot, but not the ground wire.
- Looking from the bottom of the pot, make the lug on the left a ground to the pot case (same as on a volume pot).
- Solder the new single wire you added to the PU, to the middle lug on the tone pot. Nothing is connected to the lug on the right.
You're done. You just converted a single-lead PU to double lead, for spin-a-split (or for a push-pull for coil cut).
The PU
- Remove the cover, and pull back the tape covering the wires at the one end.
- There's a wire that runs between the two coils. On Duncan 4-lead HB's, these would be the red and white wires. Carefully take the little piece of tape off that the covers that splice. Don't yank on it.
- Take an insulated wire, long enough to run from the PU to the tone pots, usually 12-15" for neck PU's, shorter for bridges.
- Solder that single wire onto the splice of the wire connecting the coils together, and put the little piece of tape back over the splice. All you did was add one more wire to the existing splice, so that you can have access from the pots.
- Put the covering tape back over the coils.
- I just ran that single wire down one leg of the base plate, and the cover fit back on fine.
The Wire
- Run the wire thru the hole/channel in the body to the controls. In some guitars you'll need to lift out both PU's to do this, in others you won't. I did it to an LP neck PU, and didn't have to lift the bridge PU out, because LP's have a big channel inbetween the PU's for all the wires.
Convert the Tone Pot to a 2nd Volume Pot
- Remove the capacitor and cut the hot wire coming from the volume pot, but not the ground wire.
- Looking from the bottom of the pot, make the lug on the left a ground to the pot case (same as on a volume pot).
- Solder the new single wire you added to the PU, to the middle lug on the tone pot. Nothing is connected to the lug on the right.
You're done. You just converted a single-lead PU to double lead, for spin-a-split (or for a push-pull for coil cut).
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