Yamaha SA2000 rewiring required?

[bafonso]

Hey everyone, the electronics on my vintage sa2000 were starting to fail and I decided to replace them all. That's when I found out that some SA2000/2200 had the push/push tone knob to do coil splitting. Seems like mine never had that.. Everything looks stock on the guitar so I'm guessing it was one of the few without it. I am wondering if it is possible to setup the stock pickups for coil splitting or not. I'm curious as to why there is a soldering spot that is not connected.. so potentially this could be a 3-wire pickup? I'm mainly asking since I need to get 4 pots, I could get some push/pull to explore new pickup territories.

Below is what my current pickups look like... there appears to be an unconnected solder point where another wire could be connected but I'm guessing converting this would be much more involved and I question if worthwhile vs getting some new pickups.

[Mark Hammer]

Your answer will be revealed by measuring the resistance between that unused lug and ground, compared to the resistance between ground and the used hot lug. If Yamaha has made it possible to hook up coil-cancelling, then the unused lug should measure something close to half the total resistance. If the lug is simply part of a generic baseplate, and the two coils are wired in series internally in a hard-to-access way, then that 3rd lug will measure open-circuit.

I might point out that, although coil-cancelling changes the inductance and resonance of the pickup, I suspect many players use it to simply "thin out" the tone. In which case, why forfeit hum-rejection? Why not simply wire up a push-pull pot to stick a bass-limiting cap in series with the pickups?

[bafonso]

Your answer will be revealed by measuring the resistance between that unused lug and ground, compared to the resistance between ground and the used hot lug. If Yamaha has made it possible to hook up coil-cancelling, then the unused lug should measure something close to half the total resistance. If the lug is simply part of a generic baseplate, and the two coils are wired in series internally in a hard-to-access way, then that 3rd lug will measure open-circuit.

I might point out that, although coil-cancelling changes the inductance and resonance of the pickup, I suspect many players use it to simply "thin out" the tone. In which case, why forfeit hum-rejection? Why not simply wire up a push-pull pot to stick a bass-limiting cap in series with the pickups?

It does indeed measure half. I'm guessing the answer to your question is that single coil sound does not sound the same as rolling off the bass I have yet to try it as none of my guitars have had coil splitting.. I only have a jazz bass w/ single coils.

[Mark Hammer]

You are correct that it does not sound identical to a simple bass rolloff. But the simple bass cut retains the hum rejection, and is actually closer in level than a coil-cut is.

If you do have access to the mid-point/junction of the two coils, I heartily recommend the old Peavey T-60 tone control. A very clever, yet simple circuit, it pans continuously from single coil at one extreme, to full humbucker at the middle setting, to full humbucker with treble cut at the other extreme.

I recently picked up an old Vantage solid-body and installed that tone circuit for the bridge pickup, in conjunction with a phase reverse switch. The neck pickup uses the bass cut switch and a standard treble-cut tone control. A phenomenal range of sounds possible.

One of the interesting aspects of the combined use of phase reverse, that tone circuit, and the neck bass cut, is that combining neck and bridge out of phase, with less neck bass content, provides a different sound with no discernible drop in level, and none of that annoying nasal sound one normally gets from N+B out of phase, whether using one or both coils on the bridge. As well, the phase-reverse means that when panning the tone pot to single-coil mode, you can select which of the two bridge coils you want to use: the one closer to the bridge or the one closer to the middle - surprisingly different tones.

I only used one volume pot, but if you have two available, you'd get even more possibilities. Finally, I will add that the wiring permits easy achievement of all the "normal" sounds you'd expect from a dual-HB with master volume and tone.