I have a Distortion Neck that I don't really love - what are my options?

[Mincer]

Parallel is quieter, with a higher resonant frequency, and a cleaner, clearer sound. It is free to try- just wire black and red together for the "hot" output, and green and white together for ground. You might like it, and depending on what you use the neck pickup for, you might like the balance with the bridge.

 

[Teleplayer]

Freefrog’s post was interesting. Maybe try 330pF in parallel with 110k across one of the coils for the SH-6. I tried something similar with a SH-14 in an attempt to get a mid boost, but it was not successful. I added small caps across one of the coils, but I did not use a resistor. Obviously it is so much easier to choose a pickup you like, as there are many options.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

So reporting back.

I tried parallel and split leaving the south coil active. I liked split better. Parallel had kind of a hollow sound, and the pickup was still really loud. Split is not too bad. Doesn't have the anemic sound some humbuckers can have split, but it still sounds kinda scratchy and thin. Not unusable, though.

I'd still rather have a good humbucker in there, but that's further down the pipeline.

 

[Mincer]

I actually like split more than parallel, too, although I like it best in parallel with a coil from another humbucker.

 

[freefrog]

So reporting back.

I tried parallel and split leaving the south coil active. I liked split better. Parallel had kind of a hollow sound, and the pickup was still really loud. Split is not too bad. Doesn't have the anemic sound some humbuckers can have split, but it still sounds kinda scratchy and thin. Not unusable, though.

I'd still rather have a good humbucker in there, but that's further down the pipeline.

Split always gives half of the inductance and parallel, 1/4 of it. So, normally, parallel is quieter (electrically). And it shouldn't have a "hollow sound": if anything, it "symmetrizes" the response of both coils, cancelling the slight comb filtering effect always due to series path with a 4 cond. wiring.

Maybe what you did find "hollow" is the effect of the resonant peak way higher in the spectrum, as implied by the divided inductance. But what you describe doesn't match any of my experiments with parallel wiring these last four decades so I wonder if an unseen problem of wiring wasn't there in this case (I've seen plenty of situations where wiring issues were making conductors accidentally resistive and/or capacitive).

Maybe "reverse wiring" of coils would give the small amount of aliveness that you want. Try series with black and green altogether. Red to ground. White to hot. Both coils will still give normal series wiring but with opposite start and finish paths. Example of measured electrical effect illustrated below (with reverse wiring giving a brighter response in this case).

 

[freefrog]

Freefrog’s post was interesting. Maybe try 330pF in parallel with 110k across one of the coils for the SH-6. I tried something similar with a SH-14 in an attempt to get a mid boost, but it was not successful.

A thing is that capacitors can have extremely different effects on hi freq comb filtering with only a few pF of difference... and that all coils don't react in the same way, even with pickups of a same model (parasitic capacitance being something variable even with the most precisely controlled production process). I had once to use two 220pF and a 270pF caps to ground between coils to obtain the same electrically induced response from 3 humbuckers of the same model and batch... So, trying small caps between coils without seeing what it does to secondary resonant peaks is always a bet, with potentially random results. IME. IMHO. YMMV.

 

[Chistopher]

But that sucker in the bridge

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Split always gives half of the inductance and parallel, 1/4 of it. So, normally, parallel is quieter (electrically). And it shouldn't have a "hollow sound": if anything, it "symmetrizes" the response of both coils, cancelling the slight comb filtering effect always due to series path with a 4 cond. wiring.

Maybe what you did find "hollow" is the effect of the resonant peak way higher in the spectrum, as implied by the divided inductance. But what you describe doesn't match any of my experiments with parallel wiring these last four decades so I wonder if an unseen problem of wiring wasn't there in this case (I've seen plenty of situations where wiring issues were making conductors accidentally resistive and/or capacitive).

Maybe "reverse wiring" of coils would give the small amount of aliveness that you want. Try series with black and green altogether. Red to ground. White to hot. Both coils will still give normal series wiring but with opposite start and finish paths. Example of measured electrical effect illustrated below (with reverse wiring giving a brighter response in this case).

View attachment 6326439

I will give that a try. I wonder if I wired it wrong, then.

 

[GilmourD]

Use a resistor to bleed the tap to ground instead of dead ground it.
Youtube....half split humbucker...there are videos on it and resistor values.

Isn't that what PRS does?

You could also do what Dimebag did on the neck pickups of some of his guitars: remove the screws from the one coil leaving only the slugs.