Do you know the difference bwteen coil splitting and coil tapping? I didn't

A coil tap changes the tone characteristics of the pickup. It's much more than rolling off the volume. You're right though, The description is pretty weak.
 
When you drop from two coils to one in a humbucker, of course you lose the noise rejection, and you drop the total number of turns, which means lower inductance and output impedance. That changes not only the overall output of the system, but the frequency response as well, basically reducing high frequency losses and shifting any resonance to a higher frequency.

Rolling off volume "a little" actually does the opposite, it increases output impedance which means greater high frequency losses to cable capacitance, and reduces resonance because the output impedance becomes more resistive than inductive.

A very clever pickup would "tap" to a pair of underwound coils such that humbucking was maintained . . . basically each coil would need a 50% tap. I'd invent that, but I suspect somebody else already has . . .
 
mshilarious said:
When you drop from two coils to one in a humbucker, of course you lose the noise rejection, and you drop the total number of turns, which means lower inductance and output impedance. That changes not only the overall output of the system, but the frequency response as well, basically reducing high frequency losses and shifting any resonance to a higher frequency.

Rolling off volume "a little" actually does the opposite, it increases output impedance which means greater high frequency losses to cable capacitance, and reduces resonance because the output impedance becomes more resistive than inductive.

A very clever pickup would "tap" to a pair of underwound coils such that humbucking was maintained . . . basically each coil would need a 50% tap. I'd invent that, but I suspect somebody else already has . . .
Click to expand...

What about switching from series to parallel in a humbucker?
 
I always thought they were the same. My only experience was with an Ibanez JS100 (the satriani model...I used to suck and choosing guitars), and basically it was a suck switch and I never used it.
 
Greg_L said:
What about switching from series to parallel in a humbucker?
Click to expand...

That puts the inductance of the coils in parallel, and parallel inductance like parallel resistance drops the inductance to half the value of a coil (assuming the coils are the same, which they are supposed to be in a humbucker), or one-quarter the value the coils in series. That should increase high frequency response; whether or not it sounds brighter than a single coil depends on the load on the pickup--at some point the impedance gets low enough such that there is not a material change. It would help with situations like really long cables--again, until you decide to use the volume control and then suddenly the highs go away (which is why people do things like treble bypass caps or bleed caps, depending on their preference).

Also the tone control, since that is fixed capacitance as you change the output impedance of the pickup you shift the corner frequency of the tone control, such that if you drop the pickup into parallel the tone control suddenly might not seem to do that much.

Passive-pickup guitars are really a not very good system where every control affects the performance of every other control; basically the wrong way do to a circuit, but guitarists are used to it and they seem to like it, so . . . it does yield a lot of different tones, so long as you experiment enough to understand everything that changes.
 
I've read about and heard clips where switching a humbucker from series to parallel makes it sound like a single but without the hum, which in most cases would be better than just turning off half of a humbucker, as you would with with normal splitting.
 
There aren't many coil tapping pickups around, but in a nutshell (well, the only explanation) is you can have a single coil pickup with 6,000 turns, and the manufacturer brings out a tap at 5,000 turns (or whatever). So you can have the full output, or maybe 75% (or whatever).
With a humbucker, you can 'split' the coils, which is a confusing misnomer. You shut one coil off, that's all. I guess with one 4-conductor humbucker, you can have a phase switch to select which coil gets shut off (very subtle), have the coils in series or parallel..... what else? That's it, I think. So three sounds from one humbucker.
They don't ever(?) coil-tap a humbucker, so your choices are really limited to a few single coil pickups. Seymour Duncan is about all I know offering tapped single coil pickups. The model name/number is followed by a 'T'. So you can get a Quarter Pounder 'regular' (SSL-7), or 'tapped' (SSL-7T).
 
Speaking of coil cutting/splitting.....I got this StewMac newsletter tip awhile ago that shows a few cool ways to rewire.
The one that interests me is where you can use one of your Tone pots to act as a variable blender of your split and non-split humbuckers for a variety of combination single/dual coil tones.

Trade Secrets! Newsletter at Stewart-MacDonald
 
miroslav said:
Speaking of coil cutting/splitting.....I got this StewMac newsletter tip awhile ago that shows a few cool ways to rewire.
The one that interests me is where you can use one of your Tone pots to act as a variable blender of your split and non-split humbuckers for a variety of combination single/dual coil tones.

Trade Secrets! Newsletter at Stewart-MacDonald
Click to expand...

Yeah variable parallel or something like that. I've heard of that but never actually seen it on a guitar to try out.
 
I feel like the dumbest guy in the room.

DUMB THINKING #1:
I really didn't know the difference, either, but it makes perfect sense- guitar pickups and electrical transformers are built very much the same way, and transformers often have different "tap points." I know about tranformer coil taps, but for some reason, never applied that knowledge to understanding pickup coil tapping.

DUMB THINKING #2.
I own a guitar (Westone Thunder 1A) that has both. Can't remember, sometimes, which mini-switch is splitter and which is tap (well, I finally memorized it- took me years. To memorize the use of TWO switches. Told you I feel dumb.)

DUMB THINKING #3.
Often,I just fiddle with the switches until I find something I like. For about two minutes. Then I get bored and start fiddling with the switches, again...
 
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