Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

Pawelt

New member
Hi all.

I have two JBJr's in bridge and neck position of my MIM standart Fender strat. Manual says that you need the black and green wires on JBJr to be reversed, but in my guitar with stock middle ceramic fender pickup It wasn't needed. Now everything is in phase in positions 2 and 4 (green wires to volume pot and black wires to the 5 way switch).

I want to change middle pickup for another single coil or stacked humbucker that sounds like single coil. Should I take neck or middle-RW/RP version of pickup? Does it matters when combining with two humbuckers without splitting coils? I would like to get maybe Antiquity II Surfer for strat. Will it sound in phase with my JBJr's? How should I connect it (and which to get, neck or RW/RP)?
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

welcome to the forum!!

i have no idea. the surfer is a fantastic pup but honestly im not sure which one you would need. maybe frank or evan will chime in and have a definitive answer for you.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

If you're not splitting the outside pickups, then I would recommend the Classic Stack Plus. It will be silent, and offer the "pole piece" vintage strat tone. The Vintage Rails and Duckbuckers are okay too, but since you're asking for the truest single coil tone, the Classic Stack Plus is the thing. Since they're all Duncans, you don't have to concern yourself with phasing issues, and since they're hum cancelling, you don't have to worry about RWRP. The middle Classic Stack Plus is RWRP, but it's of no concern to you if you aren't splitting the outside pickups.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

I was thinking about Classic Stack too. Maybe that's the way. I always wanted one hum free strat.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

If you're not splitting the outside pickups, then I would recommend the Classic Stack Plus. It will be silent, and offer the "pole piece" vintage strat tone. The Vintage Rails and Duckbuckers are okay too, but since you're asking for the truest single coil tone, the Classic Stack Plus is the thing. Since they're all Duncans, you don't have to concern yourself with phasing issues, and since they're hum cancelling, you don't have to worry about RWRP. The middle Classic Stack Plus is RWRP, but it's of no concern to you if you aren't splitting the outside pickups.

I have just bought Classic stack plus for Middle and neck And Hot stack plus for bridge, and eihter the neck or middle and bridge where wound out of phase. I have to take care to get them all in phase even though they are all Seymour Duncans...
Another question, will they sound "duller" in pos. 2 and 4 since they operate in "double" humbucking mode with the middle being RWRP?
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

If you're not splitting the outside pickups, then I would recommend the Classic Stack Plus. It will be silent, and offer the "pole piece" vintage strat tone. The Vintage Rails and Duckbuckers are okay too, but since you're asking for the truest single coil tone, the Classic Stack Plus is the thing. Since they're all Duncans, you don't have to concern yourself with phasing issues, and since they're hum cancelling, you don't have to worry about RWRP. The middle Classic Stack Plus is RWRP, but it's of no concern to you if you aren't splitting the outside pickups.

What if you have a humbucker in the bridge and you split it with the middle pickup? I was going to do a classic stack middle and classic stack + bridge in the neck with a CC bridge p'up.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

You will have hum if you split the humbucker with the middle pickup. You will basically have noise from the single coil side of the humbucker and have a noiseless middle pickup sitting there humbucking itself.

Right now I have a PG bridge humbucker and a Texas Special in the middle. No hum at all!
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

Hi all.

I have two JBJr's in bridge and neck position of my MIM standart Fender strat. Manual says that you need the black and green wires on JBJr to be reversed, but in my guitar with stock middle ceramic fender pickup It wasn't needed. Now everything is in phase in positions 2 and 4 (green wires to volume pot and black wires to the 5 way switch).

I want to change middle pickup for another single coil or stacked humbucker that sounds like single coil. Should I take neck or middle-RW/RP version of pickup? Does it matters when combining with two humbuckers without splitting coils? I would like to get maybe Antiquity II Surfer for strat. Will it sound in phase with my JBJr's? How should I connect it (and which to get, neck or RW/RP)?

Fender by default is in reverse phase compared to SSLs/APSs. Antiquities are Fender polarity, a non-RWRP Surfer is hum-canceling when combined with a non-RWRP SSL1 or APS1.

If you want hum canceling in the notch positions with split humbuckers, then you will have to use the right coil in the humbucker. Example: with the non-RWRP you will have to use the slug coil and withh RWRP you'll have to use the screw coil. Or vice versa depending on which single coil.

So if you want to go through the trouble, then you need to see which coil you like better in the humbucker, then get whatever is RWRP relative to that, which is different for different single coils.

Personally I'd flip a coin. I cannot image that the JB Jr. shows large differences between screw and slug coil.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

Grumpy........I thought when i have my strat in position 2, it would be the one coil of the humbucker and the middle single. The bridge bucker is a Duncan. I was thinking of trying a Duncan CC but I don't know if it will be too hot for the singles. For this reason I was thinking of Jeremy's recommendation of the Classic stacks.......but I don't see why I'd have to split them.
 
Re: Single coil or stacked humbucker for my strat.

If you're not splitting the outside pickups, then I would recommend the Classic Stack Plus. It will be silent, and offer the "pole piece" vintage strat tone. The Vintage Rails and Duckbuckers are okay too, but since you're asking for the truest single coil tone, the Classic Stack Plus is the thing. Since they're all Duncans, you don't have to concern yourself with phasing issues, and since they're hum cancelling, you don't have to worry about RWRP. The middle Classic Stack Plus is RWRP, but it's of no concern to you if you aren't splitting the outside pickups.

I just hooked up a duckbucker in the middle of my MIM strat. Bridge is Duncan distortion and neck is JB jr. My amp with loud volume or gain turned up makes noise ( I know it's the amp cause I've left guitar unplugged with no cords going in, and when I crank volume or gain on dirty channel it hums, but it seems when I split humbuckers in Pos 2 & 4 with duckbucker I am getting some extra noise that isn't the sound that comes from amp by itself.
The duckbucker comes in two versions bridge and neck which neck is interchangable it can be used for middle or neck, but I'm wondering if I need. To reverse polarity on it. It does say with fender pickups to use the white and green rather than red and black to reverse polarity but usually that isn't the case with Seymour Duncan pickups. The thing is their all relatively quiet on lower volume as is the amp itself. Wonder if maybe the room or outlet has some kind of grounding issue. I know when I had amp plugged into a different room that had old knob and tube wiring the amp was real obnoxious. I moved.it into a new room with newer grounded wiring and it was quiet, however I did switch outlets and now I seem to notice again can't seem to figure it out
out. Would hate to have the pull the strings and pickguard off again.
Positions 1,3,5 I don't notice any extra kind of interference so I don't think it's my wiring or a bad soldering job or something.
 
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