Fooling a single coil into a humbucker

[Dave N.]

Hey fellas,
I wanted to ask if any one has came up a with a way to make a single coil pickup into a humbucker by adding a coil into the strat cavity in order to get the quiet hum effect but still getting the cool single coil tone?

If I remember reading somewhere that Yngwie Malmsteen did this to his early strats and Ritchie Blackmore did the same too, can't remember if that was what I read many years back or something to that effect.

Thanks

Dave

[Sweetfinger]

Do a search on this site referencing "dummy coils". There's been plenty of discussion here in the past.

[jrfrond]

A non string-sensing coil ("dummy coil") can certainly be used to cancel hum, but the inductance of the dummy coil will modify the tone and response of the sensing coil, so it will not sound EXACTLY like a SC pickup. There are active designs like those used in Alembic and Ernie Ball Axis guitars that isolate the coils from each other, but now you have the sound of an active circuit, which doesn't sound exactly like a SC pickup either. In other words, there is no free lunch when it comes to hum-cancellation.