![single coil vs humbucker pots single coil vs humbucker pots](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t2PA5.jpg)
Position 2 is also a nice way thinning a distorted tone without it cleaning up too much, like Position 1 with the volume dialled down does. I'd always use it for the small high chords you often find in funk and reggae. Position 2 is perfect for these sorts of things, though. Even if one backs the volume a bit to take the edge off, it doesn't quite suit acoustic-style strumming. Given the usual wiring (5 way switch) with switch position 1 being the neck pickup and 5 being the bridge, HSH gives a great deal of tonal variety.įor my tastes, position 1 on a clean tone can be a bit too boomy. I'd certainly say it's the most versatile set up. If someone doesn't know what they want thier guitar to do, they should always get HSH.
![single coil vs humbucker pots single coil vs humbucker pots](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-fxdzp2uudp/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/2540/5540/WDHS3T11_00_WB__88730.1488734353.jpg)
![single coil vs humbucker pots single coil vs humbucker pots](http://www.emgpickups.com/pub/media/catalog/product/cache/e9872d7403ed580a15cfcc4b85f21f95/e/m/emg-series-parallel-pp.jpg)
This project is a work in progress I hope this helps you find your own path. As I said above, the tapped humbuckers just didn't compare. I created a custom 5-way selector switch to isolate the single-coil wiring from the humbucking combinations, but in the end when I flip the switch I opted for just the stand-alone single coil for the warmest sound. I did this with stacked, concentric CTS 250K/500K pots and an on/on toggle switch, all within the minimal confines of a standard Telecaster control plate. The humbucking path uses 500k pots and an 0.047 cap the single coil path uses 250K pots and a 0.022 cap. In my own (first) project guitar, I did not know quite what to expect, so I built it with HSH pickups and two complete signal paths.
#SINGLE COIL VS HUMBUCKER POTS MODS#
Of course, vari-tones and similar mods provide a IIRC, humbuckers often use 0.047 capacitors.Metal players may use 1M pots for humbuckers. Humbuckers generally use 500K pots, single coils generally use 250K.Keep in mind that there are further differences in the traditional humbucking and single coil setups, such as pots and caps. I too wanted the best of both worlds and I took the following approach. You could tap a 4-wire humbucker for a single coil sound, but in my experience the tapped humbucker doesn't sound as "warm" as a separate single coil. You will surely not be able to play a strong single coil in the H-H guitar. This is not available with a H-S-H Vai-style guitar. With Les Pauls, you can set, for example, the neck volume to zero, so the switch becomes bridge-bridge-none, making it a kill switch. It is doable to set the circuit so that the middle position is neck-bridge, but generally, you have it in H-H guitars and not H-S-H guitars.Įither way, H-S-H guitars are generally master volume and master tone, while Les Paul-style H-H guitars have separate volume and tone. This is what you cannot get with H-H setup.Īs the H-S-H wiring is usually a variation on Strat wiring, you generally get the middle pickup in middle position, while H-H guitars generally have neck-bridge as the middle position. When Ibanez came to Steve Vai about making a signature guitar for him, he said he wanted to get those positions and tones with neck and bridge humbuckers, with coils tapped so you'd get one coil of the neck or bridge with the single coil in the middle, so it's a hum-less Strat setup. Eventually the middle pickup was made reverse wound and reversed polarity, so that neck-middle and bridge middle would effectively be noiseless, humbucking positions. Jimi Hendrix is a popularizer of this technique, and it became popular enough that the Strat got wired stock with five-position switches. Players discovered that, if you put the switch in the right position, you could get the neck-and-middle and bridge-and-middle sounds. Granted, single-coil, so just bear with me. Time was, Fender Stratocasters used a three-position switch, corresponding to neck, middle and bridge pickups.