Balancing a Parallel Humbucker with Series Humbucker combination.

[MattGuitarRoberts]

Hi Pickup wiring Zen masters. I have the neck Humbucker coils wiring parallel on a LP style guitar. This works great for brightening it’s tone and also reducing its output so it better matches the output of the bridge pickup (series standard wiring). The problem is the MIDDLE position on the three way switch. Because the resistance/impedance of the two pickups is so different, the middle position tone is dominated by the neck Humbucker tone. Very little change when switching from neck to middle position, very radical change from middle to bridge position.
Has anyone got advice as how to blend these two tones better for a useful middle position sound?
Thanks!

 

[beaubrummels]

I used to run my SG with WLH like this quite often, I just balanced the difference with pickup heights and keeping the volume of one pickup rolled off a touch.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

I used to run my SG with WLH like this quite often, I just balanced the difference with pickup heights and keeping the volume of one pickup rolled off a touch.

Yep. Use the neck volume knob to balance your tone in middle position, and only crank the neck pickup when you need to.

Once back in the 70s I actually had a master volume pot in my Les Paul Custom, so I could preserve the balance when I turned down.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

You could replace one of your current pots with a push-pull, and wire that push-pull to switch the Neck pup between In Parallel mode and In Series mode. So when you're in middle position of the 3 way, you couls also temporarily switch the Neck pup to In Series mode. But admittedly this means you have to perform two motions each time.

If you wanted to get it down to just one motion, you could instead use a Fender S1 push-push switch + pot, which has more "switching" capacity, i.e. it's got 4 poles instead of just 2 like on a typical push-pull. With that you, could wire it so when its activated, the 3 way switch is bypassed, both pups' signal gets sent to the Jack, and the Neck pup is wired In Series. So this push-push would replace using Middle Position of the 3 way switch. When you deactivate the S1, the Neck pup returns to In Parallel mode, and which pup is active is dependent on where you left the 3 way switch set to (Position 1 or 3).

 

[Hank-]

Maybe these might do it: https://www.freewayswitch.com/products/

 

[MattGuitarRoberts]

Thanks for all the input. I’m looking for a very simple solution, and I think something along the lines of a resistor wired in with neck volume pot is the go. I only need to back the neck volume pot to 9ish for the bridge pickup to become more prominent in the middle position but it’s super touchy to get it to just the right place so finding the correct value resistor to place in there to achieve that slight roll-off should achieve results. The DC resistance of a parallel humbucker is one quarter of what the same pickup wired in series measures so it might just need a slight increase in load?

 

[hamerfan]

Roll a pot back to 9 and meaure the DCR. Than calculate the desired overall resistance with a 500k pot. My gut say you need 1 or 2 meg resistor, which gives you 333 to 400k overall.