Triple Coil Pickup

[ebenezer shred]

i just saw this pic of an ibanez with a humbucker and a single coil wired together. I'd like to do this and wire each of the coils to a killswitch or something so i could single out each coil, or combine them together. and have one volume control for the whole thing. (no tone controls). is this possible? if so could someone draw a schematic?

looks like this one is wired close to the way i want it, not sure though.

[Pr3Va1L]

You could try wireing it like a strat, with a 5 way super-switch, but replacing some by series wireing?

[mammoth guitars]

Wire them in series and then tap them with a 5 way switch.

[GregP]

To each their own, of course, but wiring in series is the only way to get any intrinsic "benefit" (using the word loosely, because it might end up sounding crap) of having 3 single coils so close together.

Having an odd number of coils will cancel out the hum cancelling to a degree, too.

Greg

[mammoth guitars]

Hamer, Ibanez and I think Dimarzio experimented with a triple coil. Dimarzio still has the Multibucker which is like two single coil size blade humbuckers placed together in the same pickup.

[ebenezer shred]

so.............does anybody have a schematic for it?

[GregP]

A "multibucker" (ie. *4* coils!) seems more useful to me than a 3Xsingle-coil at least. The hum is still cancelled. BUT, you wouldn't often or ever try to use all 4 of those coils individually in any sort of way. You might use the one closest to the bridge and then the one closest to the neck. Maybe.

As for a schematic-- your best bet is to actually look for a 3Xsingle-coil schematic that accomplishes what you want to accomplish. The fact that a strat-style triple-single configuration "looks" different shouldn't affect how the wiring is done in a really drastic way. That's be the easiest kind of schematic to adapt.

You can get them at most of the major manufactureres, plus at Guitarelectronics.com

Greg

[ansil]

hammer had it set up with a three way toggle for series or parrallel or off setting for what would be the middle single coil. add that to a three way that controls the regular bucker and single coil. and actually the three coils together thing sounds quite interesting very thick but i did it with an old yamaha after playing my guitar teachers hamer. it was my first expirament in secret switching.

[Mike Sulzer]

You should be able to keep reasonable hum canceling by putting two of the coils in parallel and the third in series with those. The two in parallel should have the same magnetic and coil polarity. The third coil should have opposite magnetic polarity and opposite coil polarity. Then you have a humbucker with a wider sampling area than standard. Opening one of the parallel coils gets back a standard humbucker configuration, assuming that the two remaining coils are adjacent.

There are other ways, of couse. If the third coil has magnets in phase with the other (parallel) two and the coil is wired out of phase, it still cancels hum, but it also cancels most of the lower string harmonics, giving a strange effect, I think.

To each their own, of course, but wiring in series is the only way to get any intrinsic "benefit" (using the word loosely, because it might end up sounding crap) of having 3 single coils so close together.

Having an odd number of coils will cancel out the hum cancelling to a degree, too.

Greg