Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

[GreatGreen]

Looking at coil spliting diagrams has made me realize something about coil splitting. With Seymour Duncan pickups, if you send the screw coil to ground when you split the pickup, no big deal.

However, if you want to send the slug coil to ground when you split, you actually have to wire the pickup opposite of normal.

In other words, normally, the screw coil is routed in series through the slug coil, then out to the amp. But if you want to hear just the screw coil when you split the pickup, you have to wire the pickup so the slug coil is wired in series through the screw coil.

So my main question is basically... does the “order” you route humbucker coils in series change the tone in humbucking mode? Does wiring the slug coil first in series sound different than wiring the screw coil first in series?

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

Just connect the series connection to hot instead of ground. Now you’ve bypassed the slug coil. You can even wire up an on-off-on toggle switch to do both.

This was a common mod years ago. Seems to have been forgotten.


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[dystrust]

Re: Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

Just connect the series connection to hot instead of ground. Now you’ve bypassed the slug coil. You can even wire up an on-off-on toggle switch to do both.

This was a common mod years ago. Seems to have been forgotten.


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I have my Explorer wired to split both pickups when the tone knob is pulled. Since I wanted the middle position to hum cancel, I split the bridge pickup to the slug coil and the neck pickup to the screw. Both pickups are wired with the black wire as hot, but the wiring to split each individual pickup is different.

 

[Artie]

Re: Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

Yeah . . . what they said. And, as a technical note, the signal that comes from a pickup is AC. Therefore, it doesn't matter which way comes first. (As long as its in phase.)

 

[GreatGreen]

Re: Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

Thanks for the tip about sending the screw out to hot, guys.

However, I'm going for a different setup that won't really allow me to do that. For me to split to the neck screw coil, I have to run the slug coil through the screw coil in series instead of the other way around like how the pickup was designed.

The biggest thing I'm wondering is... does wiring the slug coil first in series sound different in humbucking mode than wiring the screw coil first in series?

 

[BriGuy1968]

Re: Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

As ArtieToo said, the direction in which the electrons flow makes no difference to the sound. No matter which coil you have “1st“ in the series, the humbucker will sound the same. If you reverse one, however, assuming that the two humbuckers were designed to work together, you would effectively be reversing the phase of the one, leaving you with a OOP sound in the middle position.

 

[dystrust]

Re: Coil Splitting and how it affects Humbucking mode

Thanks for the tip about sending the screw out to hot, guys.

However, I'm going for a different setup that won't really allow me to do that. For me to split to the neck screw coil, I have to run the slug coil through the screw coil in series instead of the other way around like how the pickup was designed.

The biggest thing I'm wondering is... does wiring the slug coil first in series sound different in humbucking mode than wiring the screw coil first in series?

As we've been trying to say, you don't need to wire the pickups themselves differently, and if you do you'll end up with the pickups being out of phase in the middle position. I used this diagram to wire my Explorer, except that I reversed how the coil splits were wired so that the neck would split to the screw coil instead of the bridge.