humbucker question

[David Schwab]

That wouldn't such a bad thing in a neck pickup. It would match the output of a conventional bridge humbucker but still deliver traditional single coil clarity.

What it would sound like it two single coils, in phase, right next to each other. This is more or less a humbucker in parallel, only maybe with less phase cancelation on the highs.

Think of the effect of two strat pickups on in that 1/3 or 4/5 positions. Now move them closer. The notch shifts... probably higher.

Of course you can do this with two single coils, with opposite magnet polarity and reverse wound (or wired), and then you also have hum cancelation.

So what's the benefit of three coils, with two acting as the string sensing coils, and one as a dummy for noise cancelation? It comes out as the same as with two coils.

[Zhangliqun]

Way back in the early 80's I had a "The Strat" that I did all kinds of terrible things to. One of the moves was to replace the neck with a 27" scale neck I had a local luthier make for it. The neck was fine, the guy did a great job, and I was going longer scale for a little more sparkle on top.

But I also figured that would make the existing pickups, particularly the bridge humbucker (a Super D) narrower relative to the scale, which, in combination with the lighter strings I would have to use, would take away some of the bass response.

Long story a bit less long, I installed a 2nd humbucker in it crammed up next to the Super D. The idea was to have a 3-coil pickup to put some of the lows back in.

The second pickup was a Duncan Invader (you heard me right). But I opened it up and removed a bunch of turns from both coils to soften it up a bit, don't know how many because I never measured the DCR. I also had some spare Super D allen poles laying around and replaced the big Invader screws with them -- turned out they were totally interchangeable. I wired it up so the Invader coil directly next to the Super D was the 3rd coil in this experimental 3-bucker, but with a coil split switch so that I could switch from the Super D by itself to all 3 coils in series. They measured about 20k, so using a little math, I assume I took off roughly 1.5k off the inside coil.

I used the outside Invader coil as my middle pickup -- amazingly it was surprisingly very clucky and Stratty in combo with the Super D.

Anyway, the idea worked surprisingly well, at least to my ears at that time, gigged with it for years that way. I'd use the Super D by itself for clean and switch to 3 coils to hammer the preamp for solos. Gave it up in a trade of some sort, can't even remember what I got for it.