Whats Wrong With Putting Two Sc's Together?

[Ryanesque]

pair them up...put them next to each other where a humbucker would go..

what won't work? I know there has to be something.

Ry

[fookgub]

pair them up...put them next to each other where a humbucker would go..

what won't work? I know there has to be something.

Ry

It'll work just fine. I've done it before. It won't sound like a vintage PAF. It's hard to predict exatly what it would sound like given that there are so many different single coils out there, but it may sound good. The only way to find out is to try. Rio Grande's Tallboy humbuckers are actually two singles stuck next to each other.

[psw]

You can do that, but be aware that once you put two magnets near each other...they couple together. You also ideally will put rwrp middle pickup with an identical coil for the full HB effect. Close mounting of two single coils will result in something different from a single coil on it's own...you don't get a single coil just from splitting it if that is your intention as the close magnet of the other pickup is attracting and displacing the field...

Many have done it though

[heggis]

I think this is what PRS have done on their 513 guitars, isn't it? I sure looks that way

Heggis

[ihocky2]

Charvel did it on their Avengers, but they used cheap pickups that didn't sound that great, so a lot of people switch them out to humbuckers. They also did it on another model, I think the 375XL (can't quite remember). I've not gotten a chance to see a schematic for them yet though.

[Tim37]

I think lace dually pickups are just two single coils that are reverse wound,

[Keegan]

If you want a humbucker sound, you have to have one normal pup, one RWRP pup, and wire them in series(ie wire the white wire on one to the black on the other and then wire the remaining white and black just like you would normally, the hot wire may not be white, but you get the idea)

[GregP]

Swinehead pickups has a 2X single-coil style humbucker if I'm not mistaken.

513 does not do this, AFAIK.

[dugg]

I did exactly that just recently with my Coyote Dancer mod. http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/non-fender...lantbucker.html

My design moves the middle RWRP SC down next to the bridge SC to create a 'slantbucker' and uses a 5 position mega switch and a 3 position minitoggle to choose a total of 13 very different and useful sounds. This is such a unique axe it's hard to pry it out of folks' hands once they start playing it, especially if they're accomplished players. I recently got a shredder friend of mine to make a little video on it which I'll post on youtube soon as he gives it to me. In my research on SC's wired up as humbuckers I found the usual stuff; the PRS 513 and all, but here's a rare and little known FCS axe with a similar setup and very similar sound;

Again, I can't recommend this mod enough. If you have low impedence vintage sounding SC's the variety of sounds possible is amazing. I'm not so sure how well it would work with hotter PU's though.

[Serius13]

Im not sure if this is correct but to actually get the hum cancelling effect of a humbucker, dont you have to heve both coils tuned to the same output?

[psw]

Having matched coils gives you the most humcanceling effect...if both are reverse wired and the magnets opposite...so a bridge and middle on a contemporary strat...but a lot of really good toneful pickups have mismatched coils...either because the old ones were never accurate, of intentionally, sometime even with different wire...if rwrp they will still be noise canceling, just slightly less so...

Thanks for the clip...

is an amazing player, great instructional video and amazing guitar collection too! That double telecaster is similar to something satriani had made for him too. A lot of it is in the amps and channel switching. When I made my telecaster it was the neck pickup that was the real stand out and for much of this track that's what you are hearing...just a brilliant pickup sound.

I liked the idea and the look of the slantbucker when I saw it on GN2...post a clip or sound bie if you can, be great to hear it.

I have a project to put 4 strat pickups on a hollowbody guitar, maybe I should put on five!

[dugg]

Thanks for your interest and encouragement psw, I'll post back here directly after I put up the CD vid on yewtewb. Can you believe that John Jorgenson? One of those musicians' musicians that the general public hasn't really heard of and I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't either. Or, to put it another way, you wonder if non musicians can really 'hear' what he's doing in the first place. I was reminded of Tommy Emmanuel there for a second, then I saw on one of his other vids that and TE have done some stuff together. I guess it's a small world when you play like that.

Serius13, the hum cancelling effect appears to be complete on my Coyote Dancer setup when both SC's at the bridge are either in parallel or series. When you switch between one coil and both the disapperance of the hum is dramatic, it's gone. When you use combinations of the slantbucker and the neck single, the hum comes back a little. The way I have it wired now, the three SC's are in the same order they were in a stock strat, just that the middle is moved down next to the bridge. Problem with that is, when I combine the neck PU with just the single bridge coil it's not humbucking because it's the middle that's RPRW, not the bridge. I thought about swapping the middle and bridge which would work fine except that the three SC's are all slightly different impedences at; 5.3k, 5.5k and 5.8k which mean's the tone will be a bit different. I may just remagnetize the Alnico 5 polepieces and swap the wires instead. The other thing is, I'll only gain one humbucking position. You might think I'd be gaining two with both the series and parallel option on my five way, but since I'm losing the OOP (out of phase) it's only one.

Since I'm ranting, I'm actually building a T style version for a friend right now. It has a custom T-ish body, a G.E.Smith 'cutoff' bridge, two SC's (a tele and strat) paired at the bridge and mounted to the body and wired with a four way switch to select the four slantbucker combinations; S-coil, S-coil parallel with T-coil, S-coil series with T-coil, and T-coil. . A five way switch to choose combinations with the neck for a total of 17 (!) sounds and no dead spots. We're going for a bit of an unbalanced 'slantbucker' so the T coil will be hotter and mounted very close to the bridge. The guy I'm building it for is a 'guitar god' dude with a huge collection of axes. He's used to just grabbing whatever to get whatever sound. My goal is to build this guy an everything axe that he prefers over his others. Good luck to me, huh?