Rails questions

[JCM900MkIII]

Hello fellow guitar and bass players,

This is my first post on this forum and I'm going to start with a few silly questions.

About a year ago I was trying to find out what kind of Fernandes guitar I own. I got a tip from a user at "JapanAxeForums" that Japanese Fernandes have a factory signature on the joint of the neck.
So I unscrewed the neck but I managed to damage the rail humbucker... now it sounds like a very weak single coil.
After I managed to destroy the pickup I have become a bit of a Robin Trower fan...
And I'm in need of a new neck pickup. I love the sound of that rail HB (not a SD pickup b.t.w.). But I also want that "Fender quack" sound.

Question time:

I was wondering if it is even possible (in a sensible way) to split a rail H.B. like a normal H.B.?
Do they come in 4-wire style/type?
Any specific model which works best?

Any suggestion of how you would do what I try to achieve is welcome!

Thanks in advance :thanks:


P.S. In the bridge position I have a SD TB-6 (which is very nice!)

 

[Ventilator]

Re: Rails questions

Rails and other Seymour Duncan strat sized side-by-side humbuckers come with the four conductor wiring. You can wire to a DPDT for split wiring or parallel and still retain good output.

You can get a decent quack from parallel wiring, or if you are splitting the coils on two humbuckers and putting them in a notch position you can also get a decent quack tone.

 

[Ventilator]

Re: Rails questions

Welcome to the forum!

 

[JCM900MkIII]

Re: Rails questions

Thanks a bunch!
That's the way to go then!

 

[Varg]

Re: Rails questions

Is it an H-S-S guitar? I mean, do you ahve a single coil pickup in between the humbucker and neck rails pickup?

 

[JCM900MkIII]

Re: Rails questions

Oh, I guess the setup of the guitar makes all the difference. Forgot that.

Pickups are HB (normal size) and a single-coil sized rails.
3-way selector and 1 volume, 1 tone

I don't mind adding or changing hardware (pots etc.)