Low impedance single vs low impedance humbucker - sound differences?

[peskywinnets]

Ok, just wondering in anyone has conducted experiments on the above.

Obviously with passive pickups, as single coil is more ahem "pure" ...but has hum - & we all know the way to help kill the hum is to add another coil...but this increases inductance, which in turns steals the sparkling highs vs a single coil.

ok, I've just wound a low impedance coil - it sounds good...but has a tiny amount of hum (so much for the theory that low impedance coils don't suffer from hum - they do!), so I guess I'll eventually have to get around to winding a low impedance humbucker...but I'm sure this path must have been trodden by those who had trod before me....so to my point - for those who have dabbled with low impedance coils, was there much in the way of discernible difference between a single coil say with 1,000 windings, vs a dual coil arrangement with 500 turns apiece?

[Steve Conner]

All single coils suffer from the same signal-to-hum ratio.

A low-impedance humbucker will give you the pure effect of sensing the string motion in two places, without the limited frequency response. Who knows what that would sound like, probably quite interesting. An extreme example of it is turning on two pickups at once in your Strat: the two coils are in parallel, so the frequency response is better than either on its own, but the large distance between them gives a very noticeable cancellation.

Also, with so few turns you can make the two coils very narrow and close together, for a smaller sensing aperture and a more "single-coily" sound.

[peskywinnets]

Hi Steve....those are pretty much my thoughts - I'll come back with some samples once I can be arsed** to wind a low impedance humbucker!


**for International readers....a colloquial Brit phrase = when I can be bothered.