Coil Tapping/cutting

[b1r2a3d]

Hi, I am new here, if this is a sticky or in a previous forum please just post the address. I don't have the time to search through this entire website.

Here is my story, I have an Sg special faded and I want to coil cut/tap/switch, whichever one means shutting off one pickup in a humbucker, I've heard and read it called so many different things I am not even sure. But that is not it. I recently played an SG at Elderly Instruments in Michigan that had a strange knob, where the tone on the top knob would have been it was labeled "Tap". Upon playing withit I discovered that it not only shut off one pickup in the bridge position but also phased in how much it was working, so you could blend in from all out to nothing and everything in between. The switch didn't pull up like others that I have seen rather it just spun like the volume/tone knobs do. Now I am guessing that they only cut one humbucker (the neck position) but I want to take both tone knob pots and do this to both humbuckers and have one volume/ one tone knob for everything (I'm not willing to drill nor cut). I could really use some pointers on how to go about this, I have used a soldering gun before and have steady hands so my ability isn't the question it's just what I'm doing, I don't know enough about electricity/ knobs/ or guitar pots to do this on my own.

On a side question, someone please explain series/parallel wiring and the Jimmy Page setup.

Thanks.

Again if this is somewhere else just post the address to that topic or PM me if it's easier.

[jmann]

first do this, but leave the coil tap/split wires off since you aren't using a push pull.

http://www.teslapickups.com/wp-content/themes/tesla/diagrams/2-Humbuckers/2-Humbuckers-1-Volume-1-Tone-3-Way-Switch-1-Push-Pull.pdf

 

then remove the capacitors from your tone pots and then simply attach the coil split wires to the center lugs on what were originally your tone pots, leaving one outer lug case grounded and making sure that the case is grounded and you will be able to variably control the amount of signal from that half of the coil gets shorted to ground.

 

NOTE: you will need 4 or 5 conductor pickups which stock SGs do not generally have.

[jmann]

also the color codes on whichever pickups you do use will vary so don't necessarily go by the colors on the diagram i posted there.

[EVOL!]

I don't have anything to add in regards to the pickups. Just wanted to say how killer Elderly Instruments is and how much I miss it now that I don't live in Michigan. Thank god for mail orders and the internet. Buy all of my strings and picks from them.

[jmann]

series/parallel wiring is another method used to obtain a more single coil like sound from a humbucker, similar to the goal of a coil split. the two coils of a humbucker are wired in series with each other and by using a switch to change that to parallel it is supposed to function more like a sigle coil, 2 single coils actually. one of the pros of using this method is that the pickup is still hum cancelling, unlike with a coil split.