Three Humbucker Combo

rtcook

rtcook

New member
Hi all,

First post for me. I apologize if any of this has been repeated, but I need opinions on this setup. I have a newer Kramer Voyager that has the three original humbuckers in it and I hate them. They are individually controlled with three on/off toggle switches. It has a licensed Floyd Rose as well. I want to change out the pickups for some Seymour Duncans. What I have in mind is a TB-2N for the neck, a TB-4 for the middle and a TB-10 for the bridge. If anyone is familiar with Kramers, they made a Nightswan model that had two humbuckers in it. They were in the bridge and middle positions. No neck pickup was used. From what I have read they used the TB-10 in the bridge and the TB-4 in the middle just like I want to do. I am just filling in the neck with a TB-2N. My other though is using the TB-12 instead of the TB-10 in the bridge. I like the sound of the TB-12 better than the TB-10 on the SD website, but I have been told it might not be as good of a mate for the TB-4 in the middle position. What do you guys think? What combination do you recommend? I also want to change out the three ON/OFF toggles to ON/OFF/ON so I can have each pickup either SERIES/OFF/SPLIT. Comments welcomed on that thought as well.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me,

Roger
 
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Re: Three Humbucker Combo

Not alot of us 3 HB guys in this forum :smack: .
I'm not familiar with the pickups you're looking at, but if you're familiar with them, that's always a good start. The middle pickup is always the toughest choice, but it sounds like you have good experience with the TB4 there, so i would stick with that choice. As far as switches, etc., you could even do some push/pulls for parallel sounds, or maybe to switch from outer to inner coils on the neck and bridge. Or maybe just switching which coil is active in the middle pup when split. You want to try for as many North/South combos as you can (N neck/S bridge, N mid/S bridge, etc.) so you have plenty of humcancelling tones. How many volume and tone pots do you have to work with?
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

Yeti,

Thank you for responding. Like I said I took the middle and bridge pickup combo from a Kramer Nightswan produced guitar. It was very popular. I added the TB-2N to fill the neck pickup. I understand that it is a very good choice for a neck pickup. As far as the switches go, I understand there are alot of possible combinations. Each humbucker has its own ON/OFF mini toggle switch. There is only a master volume and no tone control so I am limited in that sense. I do not want to drill any additional holes in the body. I'm thinking of contactin SD to get their opinion as well.

Roger
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

Ahh, then i would suggest a push pull to switch what coil of the middle is active. That way you can have the hum cancelling combos with both the neck and bridge. You'll like those sounds, too. That's the best spots for "quacky" strat/tele like tones.
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

DO a search on this topic.m There isn't much. What's your tonal goal? Massive power? Flexibility? Single coil/SC sounds? Augmenting neck & bridge tones? We need to gather a band around this. I've been working on some triple pup tone curves. Maybe going custom shop....
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

I guess my overall goal is to improve the overall sound/tone. The current pickups are crap. Like I mentioned, Kramer made the Nightswan and it had only a bridge and middle humbucker and they were the Full Shred and the JB. I'm after that 80-90's tone. Hard to metal I would guess. Not the metal of today. I talked with some SD people and they agree with my combo. I think I will use a ON/OFF/ON toggle for each to get SERIES/OFF/SPLIT configurations. That will give me some nice combinations.

Roger
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

I like your idea of using the on-off-on switches for splitting. If you split the neck and bridge to the stud coil, and the middle to the adjustable coil, you'll still maintain humbucking in most positions. The neck + bridge, when split, would be the only combo I can think of that wouldn't be humbucking. (Any pup split by itself, of course, wouldn't be humbucking.)

You'ld have a killer selection of tones, with fairly simple wiring.

Artie
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

See - with the full shred it's pretty low bass according to the tone curve. I'd maybe put that in the neck and then I'd want something with a decent bass and a fat treble. That way when you kick in the middle you can beef up the neck bass a bit, or mellow out the JB in the bridge.

FS = 448
?? = 636
JB = 648? Check the tone chart...

I think that would significantly alter each regular bucker.
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

I'm checking on that string spacing now. I was under the impression that these pickups are used throughout the neck, middle and bridge for all Floyd Rose setups. As the strings taper to the nut, the middle and the neck would still be wider than standard if you used a Floyd Rose tremelo. It's plain geometry. But, would it be enough to justify TB pickups? I don't know. That's why I'm checking. SD is not real clear on the string spacing on the standard pickups. I see one is .385 and another is .4, where the TB spacking is .414. Can anyone shed some light on that?

Roger
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

ArtieToo said:
I like your idea of using the on-off-on switches for splitting. If you split the neck and bridge to the stud coil, and the middle to the adjustable coil, you'll still maintain humbucking in most positions. The neck + bridge, when split, would be the only combo I can think of that wouldn't be humbucking. (Any pup split by itself, of course, wouldn't be humbucking.)

You'ld have a killer selection of tones, with fairly simple wiring.

Artie
Click to expand...


Artie,

This is not what I meant. I was meaning splitting each individually. Your idea sounds very interesting. Could you draw up a wiring diagram for this?

Thanks,

Roger
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

rtcook said:
Artie,

This is not what I meant. I was meaning splitting each individually. Your idea sounds very interesting. Could you draw up a wiring diagram for this?

Thanks,

Roger
Click to expand...

Actually, thats what I meant too. When you split them, even singly, you have the option of selecting which coil to split to. If you do the opposite coil on the middle, many of your "notch" positions will remain humbucking.

To put it simpler, when you have all three split, your guitar will be very much like a meatier Strat, with the middle pup RW/RP. Thats why it would be such a great combo of sounds.

And yes, I can draw up a diagram shortly. ;)

Artie

(By "shortly", I mean later tonight, or tomorrow.)
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

One thing I did with my coil splits was rotate the neck pickup so the screw side is facing the bridge (same orientation as the bridge pup). The neck would split to the stud coil (North) and the bridge to the screw coil (South), so you would get humbucking, but also you get the maximum distance between active coils. This gave a very distinctive tone, like the 2 coils were covering a larger amount of frequencies. This setup had an "inner/outer coils push pull, and while the 2 were similar, I ALWAYS went with the outer setting. It just had more oomph to it. As far as combos with the middle pup split, the middle and bridge had a twangy, tele-ish sound that was great for country style, while the neck and middle had a bit of quack, great for funk riffs. If you tossed in a push/pull volume, you could choose which middle coil to split to, and have all the sounds I've described with humbucking, plus a few other combos as well.
Hope I'm not sounding too pushy on what you should choose, but I went through an obsessive phase about getting the max number of tones...and it's still ongoing :smack: .
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

I think three on-off-on switches should be pretty versatile.

Yeti obviously has the experience here, and I don't want to
contradict the stuff he's heard with stuff I have yet to hear.

However I'm in the process of building a 3 humbucker, am
rotating the neck pickup and setting it up to split the neck
screws and bridge stud. This was based on the following :

1) Dimarzio website saying best "quacking" on HSH guitars is using
coils from HB adjacent to the SC
2) measurements comparing strat and 3 HB that indicated that the
adjacent coils on the neck and middle (or bridge and middle) were
the closest I could come to having the same samplng points on
the string as the strat 2 and 4 positions
3) that the bridge stud coil, (which is positioned away from the bridge),
sounds a little better than the screw coil (which is near the bridge).

Still, what to do with the middle ?

If it is a neck humbucker and you rotate it than all adjacent coils will
be of opposte magnetic polarity and winding. If you split to the stud coil, it will better match the strat measurements on neck/middle, and be
humbucking. You'll have that with the bridge if you split to the screws.

Yetis idea of setting up the push/pull to choose which of the middle coils
makes a lot of sense (in fact I'm doing it on my 3 hummer, though with
a switch).
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

Very good info, Frebnedzo. To be honest, when I had the "inner/outer" setup in, I had a p90 in the middle, which didn't do much tonewise in any combo, so the Dimarzio info sounds good to me. The outer coil sound was just personal preference for its uniqueness. I'm definitely curious to hear what some of these other pickup combos will sound like (especially the middles).
 
Re: Three Humbucker Combo

Artie,

Did you get a wiring diagram wrote up for this for me?

Thanks,

Roger
 
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