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Coil Taps & Reverse Phase


hessodreamy

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This is a pretty simple mod to put in a couple of coil taps for neck & bridge, and a DPDT switch to reverse the phase of the bridge pickup relative to the neck (as opposed to 1 coil of the humbucker relative to the other coil, as a lot of circuits do) - kinda like a mustang (I think)

I'm pretty sure this'll work ok, and that the phasing will work regardless of whether single or double coils are selected, but I ran into problems once before doing something similar (but more complicated).

Can someone double-check my circuit?

Cheers

circuit.gif

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That’s basically a good circuit

You need to add the ground and hot wire to the pup on the left (neck pup), as you have with the other. The coil cut switch S1 just goes to ground, not to the pup selector. ie the left pup should be wired the same as the right, just without the phase switch.

With that fixed.it is the same as my favorite simple version of a versatile switching for two humbuckers, with a very wide range of sounds. You may well have thought of the following, but this circuit has a few tricks up its sleeve that you can take advantage of:

• If you want to simplify the operation, you can combine the two coil cuts into one DPDT switch, using half the switch for each pickup. It is then like a overall Fender/Gibson switch, 90% of the worlds guitars with one toggle!. Fine to keep them as separate however, but I find that combining single coils and full humbuckers sounds very similar to the SC alone, and combining like with like works best.

• When you flick the phase switch, it also changes which bridge single coil gets cut, so it gives you another SC bridge sound which will be a little different, due to its position, and also if you are able to adjust the poles.

• Provided you pick the correct coil to be cut on the neck, you will get hum-canceling on both your in-phase and your out-of-phase combos. (if you get this bit wrong, it will all be hum adding!). If this does not happen, just reverse the outer neck leads.

Edited by JohnH
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Thanks a lot.

I do know that I need to connect the output/ground of the neck pickup. Must have just been having a slow day when I did the schematic!

Not sure what you mean by combining the coil taps in one DPDT switch. Did you mean a single switch to go from 2 hums to 2 singles, and then a second switch to flip the phase? I wouldn't go for that - one of the sounds i'm after is that beidge humbucker/neck single sound a la radiohead.

Hadn't considered the hum cancelling of the 2 pickups. Would I need to use the north of one coil and the south of the other? Or is it just a matter of wiring it up and flicking the hot and cold on the phase switch if it hums? Actually I think that amounts to the same thing, but i'm not sure!

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Thanks a lot.

Not sure what you mean by combining the coil taps in one DPDT switch. Did you mean a single switch to go from 2 hums to 2 singles, and then a second switch to flip the phase? I wouldn't go for that - one of the sounds i'm after is that beidge humbucker/neck single sound a la radiohead.

yes that was what I meant, but it sounds like you know what you want, and thats fine.

Hadn't considered the hum cancelling of the 2 pickups. Would I need to use the north of one coil and the south of the other? Or is it just a matter of wiring it up and flicking the hot and cold on the phase switch if it hums? Actually I think that amounts to the same thing, but i'm not sure!

For your in-phase SC combinations, you want north from one pup and south from the other. When you flick the phase switch, youll get either two norths or two souths out-of-phase, which will hum-cancell. If it doent work out, swap the ground and hot connectiosn on the neck pup (assuming the bridge has the phase switch).

I have a drawing of your circuit on my site. See:

http://au.geocities.com/guitarcircuits

and look at the page on 'two twin coil pickups' - the one with three switches is yours (or its four switches if you want to keep independent coil cuts). Theres also a page on hum cancelling.

cheers

John

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