zero ohms and it works?

[Joe Gwinn]

That's pretty freaky. Anyone have any bifilar wire to try it out?

MWS sells it as "Multifilar magnet wire": http://www.mwswire.com/mfilar.htm.

Twistite should also work: http://www.mwswire.com/twistite1.htm.

The difference is that in twistite the strands are twisted, while in multifilar they are parallel. In a pickup, this will not matter.

No idea what these cost. I assume that there are other makers.

One can get much the same effect by putting a capacitor in series with a singlecoil.

[David Schwab]

One can get much the same effect by putting a capacitor in series with a singlecoil.

Well that doesn't sound too interesting then... I don't see any benefit, and depending on the cap value you would lose low end.

[Joe Gwinn]

Well that doesn't sound too interesting then... I don't see any benefit, and depending on the cap value you would lose low end.

It didn't seem worthwhile to me either, but I've never tried it either, or heard it. But the Italian thought it worth protecting.

[David Schwab]

It didn't seem worthwhile to me either, but I've never tried it either, or heard it.

I remember reading something in Guitar Player mag years ago.. the guitar player from .38 Special put electrolytic caps in series with his pickups. He said it gave a compressed sound. I never tried it myself.

But the Italian thought it worth protecting.

Those damn Italians! lol Oh wait, I'm Italian! I guess if you come up with something new, and you have the money to get a patent, why not. As I'm sure you've seen, there are a LOT of unusual pickup ideas patented, and I bet most of them don't even sound all that good.

[Arthur Dent]

If you used capacitors right, I bet you you could get some pretty funny-sounding resonance between them and the pickup coil.

[David Schwab]

If you used capacitors right, I bet you you could get some pretty funny-sounding resonance between them and the pickup coil.

I've done some stuff using caps to bypass one coil in a humbucker which gave some interesting resonance effects. The one thing it did was make a bridge pickup sound like a neck pickup on my one pickup lucite guitar. It worked best with very high resistance pickups. I've since lost the exact schematic...

I recently saw something like it on a guitar wiring web site. Sooner or later everyone tries the same things.

[Instigator]

Not to sound conceited, but the "capacitor trick" is one of the oldest in my book. Meaning I used to fit a hidden capacitor on some of my pickups that didn't affect tone but would render the pickup "unreadable" - talk about secret specs!