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Posted

After talking to a guy in the pub the other night (I'm currently trying to con him out of his Variax), he was telling me about a mod you do on coil tapped HB's where a tone pot blends the amount of humbucking that goes on. I've never heard of this before, but he said he's seen a guitar with it on and that it makes the guitar very versatile indeed.

Apparently when the pot is in the zero postion, the HB acts as a single coil and when it's up a 10 the HB is a full on HB. Everything in between acts as the single coil with varying amounts of the second coil being effective.

Waht do you think, possible, BS or was he smiking crack in the bogs in between pints? :D

Kaj :D

Posted

I guess that you can use these... http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_p...-Pull_Pots.html

I have seen them on some guitars but I can't find them anywhere...I've been going through my pile of guitar mags at work but to no avail. I believe that the guitars are something to do with Wilkinson, possibly Vintage but I can't be 100%. They had a nice little rosewood heel cap, I remember that :D

Posted

Im by no means an electronic genius....far from it. But wouldnt a split coil humbucker with a seperate volume for one of the coils do somthing like this? The only other thing I can think of is a multi position switch the taps the second coil at different intervals. Then again he could just be blowin smoke too.

Posted

afaik its on the yamaha sgv's (the really ugly ones)

its like a blend control between the two coils of the 'bucker, on mine its got a ''notch'' at the centre...so at 0% its one coil, 50% its both, and 100% its the other coil.

Posted

oo, tempting...but i've got 15 guitars in all, and can't bear to part with any of my babies :D

Posted
Im by no means an electronic genius....far from it. But wouldnt a split coil humbucker with a seperate volume for one of the coils do somthing like this? The only other thing I can think of is a multi position switch the taps the second coil at different intervals. Then again he could just be blowin smoke too.

Thats works just fine and is the easiest way but its easy to end up with too many controls, i like the thing weezerboy mentioned with the centre notched pot.

The peavey t-60 had something else going on thats an interesting idea that means you wont loose your tone control.

from 0-5 is normal tone control operation, around 5-6 is humbucker and 6+ gradually cuts out the coil so by the time you reach 10 its just a single coil. Obviously this all depends on how accurate the taper of your pot is and it makes it harder to find full humbucker mode at speed but still an interesting mod to consider

I have just found a wiring diagram here:

t-60

It looks like all it does is have the coil split leads from the pickup going to the spare tag on the tone pot

Posted

I seem to recall reading that the T-60 had a specially designed pot for that but I can't be 100% sure. I'll look through my guitar leccy for musicians book when I get home as I'm sure that I read it in there

Posted

I did have a wiring diagram from an old issue of guitarist magazine that showed the mod done to a les paul with the existing tone pots. I cant find it at the moment but its definately possible with normal pots - whether its exactly the same as the peavey wiring i really cant remember

Posted

Now here is a question. On the 50-50 blend pot. wouldnt one coil sound basically the same as the second coil. (i know its reversed polarity but still the sound of a reversed polarity pickup is marginal from what I recall). So at 50% you have the humbucker, but at 0 or 100% you would have just one coil with the same number of windings only a reversed polarity.

Posted
Now here is a question. On the 50-50 blend pot. wouldnt one coil sound basically the same as the second coil. (i know its reversed polarity but still the sound of a reversed polarity pickup is marginal from what I recall). So at 50% you have the humbucker, but at 0 or 100% you would have just one coil with the same number of windings only a reversed polarity.

Yeah there wont be much difference, a bit more of a difference on the two pickup settings. It would be better for bridge pickups (where the difference between a single coil very close to the bridge, and one slightly further away) can be quite noticeable.

It might be a more usefull idea on a pickup like the Dimarzio D sonic that has one blade coil and one screw coil:

d-sonic

...

On the T-60 style wiring, i am fairly sure there is nothing special about the pots used after looking at the diagram and the other mods suggested on the link i posted. I wouldnt be surprised if Peavy wanted us to think it was a special pot because a lot of the marketing for this guitar in the 70's focused on its unique tone controls. Personally i think the sytem is a bit too fiddly to be usefull to most guitarist anyway

Posted

in hindsight, its probably at 0% one of the two coils in the 'bucker, and at 100% its both of them.

coherant thought isn't at its best when i've been finishing work at midnight :D

Posted

I think you're right Wez, I can't find what I was looking for but I think that I was getting mixed up with something else. I quite like coil taps on high output humbuckers (18k+) because the difference between the two sounds is more noticeable but I can't see why I'd want to have a sound inbetween...but maybe if I'd tried one I would think differently?

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