Humbucker split coil… which coil is preferred?

psychodave

psychodave

Well-known member
I’m planning on wiring up a bridge and neck pickup to split coils. What is the preferred coil to use (north coil or south coil) or screw side or slug (aka, coil closest to the bridge and or neck)?
 
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Monkey Man said:
For maximum variation between all the selectable pickup combos I'd go the neck Dave.
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I’m gonna do both… I just want to know which coils are preferred. Inside or outside coils. I may just end up wiring it up so the humbuckers are wired in parallel so they still cancel noise.
 
I'd recommend that a split humbucker activates the coil closest to the neck and turns off the coil closest to the bridge on both pickups.

For neck splits on 22 fret guitars, this puts the coil closest to the neck in the standard place under the second octave harmonic. On 24 fret guitars, you're still going to want to activate the coil closest to that harmonic.

For the bridge split, if you use the coil closest to the bridge, it's probably going to sound too strident. Using the coil that's farther from the bridge will give you just a bit more fatness.
 
Inside pair is the most common and what I use.

One of my guitars has Seymour Duncan Triple Shot and a out of phase switch. So I can do series, parallel or either coil.

With the inside set you can get close to the position 2 quack of a Stratocaster when running both single coils.
 
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Have never found a humbucker that sounded good split. Put in a P90 if you want a real single coil.
 
I use both--inner coils together and outer coils together--because they're different sounds.

Inner coils together is Petrucci's clean sound, like the intro on Pull Me Under. Has a bit of that Strat quack. Outer coils together has a Tele sound.

If you orient the pickups right and wire it right, both those combinations should be hum canceling.
 
I use 5 way superswitches and do the following to all my HH guitars:

Neck
Neck Outer Split (closest coil to neck)
Neck + Bridge
Neck + Bridge Inner Coils
Bridge

Then add a push/pull to allow the bridge pickup to go from series to parallel. Gives me a lot of tonal variation.
 
I have a free way switch coming and wanted to have typically humbucker setting for one path, then do split coil for the other part. I’m beginning to wonder if I should just use humbuckers in parallel for the other switch path.
 
Are the pickups super extra hot? How close to the bridge? What string gauge and tuning? What tone are you chasing?
I've seen a lot of modern Ibanez that come with a switch to select either. Might want to look into that (wiring) 🤷‍♀️
 
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NowYou'rePlayingWithPower said:
Are the pickups super extra hot? How close to the bridge? What string gauge and tuning? What tone are you chasing?
I've seen a lot of modern Ibanez that come with a switch to select either. Might want to look into that (wiring) 🤷‍♀️
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Bridge is a suhr aldrich (17k) and the neck is a manlius custom hot (like 15k). Just wanting to get a single coil sound for when I play yngwie stuff.
 
psychodave said:
Bridge is a suhr aldrich (17k) and the neck is a manlius custom hot (like 15k). Just wanting to get a single coil sound for when I play yngwie stuff.
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I'm gonna guess that pole side on the bridge at least if they're in one of your floyd equipped charvels since it's pretty close to the bridge with that pickup, imo. You'll probably still have to play around with the volume/tone and may even want to swap the pots as mentioned. One of my Jacksons is in the just right zone for the screw side, so to speak. But my other guitars that are split and rock the "bridge/screw side" when in single coil are either lower output or end up "shrill/icepick" sounding.

If you have a strat on hand, you could measure the average distance between the saddles and pole pieces on bridge and neck pickups and match whatever coils are closest on your humbucker equipped guitar, maybe? 🤷‍♀️ I would also mess around with uneven pickup height maybe a little if you end up on one side of the spectrum or the other (shrill/mud). I know people will say it will never sound like a strat or be too thin, or whatever, but I've messed around with some high output humbuckers and found the goldilocks spot in both modes with some of them.
 
Trust me, try those! They're purposely disbalanced between the coils, which makes the split tone a lot better and louder.
Big difference with a split Super Distortion; which becomes weak and thin/brittle/bitey.

The Air Norton -when used as a neck pickup- split gives you a beautiful, big, bell-like bluesy, yet clear single coil tone.
I have the Air Norton in 3 guitars; 2 of them are coil-split, one is parallel split and while it doesn't add hum, it's more lacklustre compared to the true coil-split ones.

From Duncan, the SH-16 Custom/59 Hybrid splits well, as does the Screamin' Demon. Pearly Gates neck split is a bit more meh; loses a lot of output.
I basically add push/pull pots to all my guitars, if they don't already have them.

DiMarzio Breed Neck, when split, gives me the best Master of Puppets clean-interlude tone.
The DiMarzio AT-1 ain't no slouch either, split.
 
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