Coil Taps...how To Keep?

[DrChrisMD]

Hey guys,

I've got an Ibanez JTK2 with two hums, and each one has a coil tap swich (like those horizontal buttons that has one side up and the other down...so they're not actually built right in to the knobs, and they don't slide like the ones on the fender jag's or jagstangs). I was wondering how easy it is to change pickups in a guitar and keep the coil tap feature? Is this something that can be applied to any set of humbuckers, or is there a chance that my hums were specially made to be able to be tapped?

[spazzyone]

any four wire hum can be tapped

and ill look at your switches and tell if you can use your setup as is

and if it works now it should with other p-ups

but your color code will be differant

[crafty]

Here's the original wiring diagram for your guitar:

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/wire.asp?y=2004&w=JTK2

Simply purchase your replacement pickups with four-wire conductors and adapt their color codes to the Ibanez setup.

[DrChrisMD]

Thanks guys! I'm a take it in to find replacements

[ihocky2]

Does it have coil taps or coil splits? Generally humbuckers are split. All that is doing is taking the signal from only one side of the pickup. On 4 conductor humbuckers all they do is basically cut the wire that goes from one coil to the next and attach leads to it. You then have the choice of what you do with those wires. A true coil tap has a wire that connects somewhere in the middle of the coil winding. It will basically cut the resistance and sound of the pickup in half. A coil tap seems to be be common on single coils, but isn't limited to them.