This weekend I had the chance to put Franky through the paces with the new pickup combo and the Virtual 3rd Humbucker wiring. As I mentioned in my post in the Guitar Forum, the pickups are a DiMarzio Super Distortion and PAF Pro. I ran across Artie's mod while looking for other simple wiring ideas. This one is really easy and you don't have to do anything to the face of the guitar at all as long as you have the switch already. A standard 3-way wafer switch is all that is needed (and two 4-conductor pickups of course).
I'm really impressed with this mod. There is no dropout going through the 3 positions. It's a nice change from the typical both humbuckers on in the middle. The measured DC resistance is between 11-12k with mine although YMMV with different pickups. I do notice some interesting strat-ish qualities with it too when rolling back the volume. It still cuts through really well, sounds great with chords, and most of all, it's not muddy. Clean or dirty, it plain out works.
Now, if you wanted to, you could just flip the neck pickup around so that you'd have both inner coils on while in the middle position and yet still retain the noise cancellation. I have mine set to be the bridge inner and neck outter. There's still a little bit of noise like you'd hear with normal splitting but that could be from the hugely mismatched coils too. It doesn't bother me though because it is so little. Not a big deal.
Overall, I'm real happy with this mod. I like it much more than both humbuckers full on in the middle. I encourage anyone who is remotely interested in a different sound from the middle position of your 3-way switch to try this. But it has to be a Fender-style wafer switch. This won't work with a Gibson-style toggle.
Note: The 3-way wiring in the diagram is as if the neck pickup is at the top with the switch mounted in the pickguard. Trust me, I found that out the hard way. Luckily it was with the screwdriver test before screwing the pickguard down.
Great job with this one, Artie. And thanks for the cool mod.
I'm really impressed with this mod. There is no dropout going through the 3 positions. It's a nice change from the typical both humbuckers on in the middle. The measured DC resistance is between 11-12k with mine although YMMV with different pickups. I do notice some interesting strat-ish qualities with it too when rolling back the volume. It still cuts through really well, sounds great with chords, and most of all, it's not muddy. Clean or dirty, it plain out works.
Now, if you wanted to, you could just flip the neck pickup around so that you'd have both inner coils on while in the middle position and yet still retain the noise cancellation. I have mine set to be the bridge inner and neck outter. There's still a little bit of noise like you'd hear with normal splitting but that could be from the hugely mismatched coils too. It doesn't bother me though because it is so little. Not a big deal.
Overall, I'm real happy with this mod. I like it much more than both humbuckers full on in the middle. I encourage anyone who is remotely interested in a different sound from the middle position of your 3-way switch to try this. But it has to be a Fender-style wafer switch. This won't work with a Gibson-style toggle.
Note: The 3-way wiring in the diagram is as if the neck pickup is at the top with the switch mounted in the pickguard. Trust me, I found that out the hard way. Luckily it was with the screwdriver test before screwing the pickguard down.
Great job with this one, Artie. And thanks for the cool mod.
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