
Fig. 1
You can split a humbucker to the north coil or south coil, or you can access a tapping point in the middle of a single-coil pickup. Learn what this means, and how to do it.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month we'll take a closer look into what tapping and splitting a pickup really means. Coil tapping is often confused with coil splitting, and a lot of companies and mod pages use the term tapping when they mean splitting, and vice versa. As the golden rule of thumb, you can remember: You are tapping single-coil pickups and you are splitting humbuckers. This should avoid major confusion about this subject.
So, what is this all about? Let's start with coil-splitting humbucker pickups, which is much more common in the guitar world compared to tapping, and we've discussed this many times before. In technical terms, splitting a humbucker means shutting down one of the two coils to ground so the other coil remains active as a single-coil for a much brighter tone, but also with less volume. In other words, splitting a humbucker means making a single-coil out of a humbucker pickup, with all the single-coil pain and glory you know: hum, noise, and reduced volume.
In reality, it never really sounds like a good single-coil pickup. At best it sounds "single-coil-ish," and most of the time, more like a kind of P-90 than a Strat or Tele pickup. Besides this, you'll struggle with an unbalanced volume between the humbucker and the single-coil tone, which is the nature of the beast in any passive guitar circuit, but I'll address exactly this issue in detail soon, in a future column.
"Splitting a humbucker means making a single-coil out of a humbucker pickup, with all the single-coil pain and glory you know: hum, noise and reduced volume."
The humbucker is usually much louder compared to the split version. I think this is no surprise to anyone. Many companies tried to find a compromise for these issues, so there are special humbuckers that sound really good in split mode and like real single-coils. On the downside, these special humbuckers usually don't sound very good as full humbuckers ... choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, it's all up to your personal choice. There are also special humbuckers that try to compensate the volume drop when split. (As mentioned before, we'll cover those in detail in a future column.)
Generally, you need a humbucker with a 4-conductor wiring to split it, so you have access to the start and finish of both coils (Fig. 1). It's not possible to do this with a standard two-conductor humbucker, like a standard PAF-style pickup. With 4-conductor wiring, it's possible to split a humbucker in two different ways.
The first way is by shutting down the slug side (north coil) of the humbucker, leaving the screw side (south coil) active as a single-coil pickup. This is also often referred to as "splitting to the south coil" and is recommended for neck humbucker pickups.
Technically his means:
- South coil start = hot output
- North coil start + north coil finish + south coil finish = soldered together with the bare wire to ground
Fig. 2
- Fig. 2 shows what this looks like for a Seymour Duncan humbucker pickup, but you can use this diagram for any 4-conductor humbucker pickup by simply using a color-chart diagram to transfer the different pickup wires to the humbucker you have.You can also split a humbucker with 4-conductor wiring by shutting down the screw side (south coil) of the humbucker, leaving the slug side (north coil) active as a single-coil pickup. This is usually referred to as "splitting to the north coil" and is recommended for bridge humbucker pickups because it gives a fuller sound than compared to the screw side. You can see this illustrated in Fig. 3.
- Techically this means:
- North coil start = hot output
- North coil finish + south coil start + south coil finish = soldered together with the bare wire to ground
Please note: In split mode, the humbucking function is no longer active, so you'll receive all kinds of hum and noise, just like with any other single-coil pickup. Besides using a switch to split the humbucker, it's possible to use a pot for a variable split (aka "spin-a-split"), but this goes too far for our column today.
Fig. 3
Now, what's the deal with tapping? A standard single-coil pickup is a spool of wire wound around a set of magnets with a start and a finish, connected to the two pickup wires usually referred to as "hot" and "ground," with the hot wire usually coming from the finish of the coil. A tapped pickup has two hot wires with one connected to the finish of the winding, just like with any standard single-coil pickup. The other one is connected to a point somewhere in the middle or close to the end of the winding, effectively "tapping" (hence the name) into the coil to access a different tone. The tapped connection gives you a lower-output version of the full coil for two different tones from the same single-coil pickup. Usually tapped pickups are overwound single-coil pickups, so you have the full power but also a more traditional vintage-flavored tone at your fingertips when using the tapped connection.
Getting access to both tones is very easy to do. With a standard SPDT on-on switch, you can simply engage the full or the tapped connection following this basic schematic shown in Fig. 4. Instead of the additional mini-toggle switch, you can use any standard push-pull or push-push pot for this option, so you don't need to drill any holes into your pickguard.
Fig. 4
It's also possible to replace the switch with a pot to make it variable, so you can blend between both sounds. Technically, it will work, but it's not recommended, because you'll have a good portion of sound loss in a passive system. This is a complex system and, in the background, you'll see that besides the blend pot there will also be a volume pot somewhere for this pickup, so here is a shortened and simplified version.
To make it work in a passive system, you need a high-impedance blend pot— i.e., a 250k pot—to avoid any load of the upper winding, resulting in massive treble loss. Most single-coil pickups use 250k volume pots, but the blend pot needs to be smaller than this to avoid a massive volume drop. In technical terms: The blend pot should not act as a series resistor for the volume pot. Both issues are contrary to each other, so in reality a 100k blend pot would probably work, but only with a good portion of tone loss.
Why? Think of the following scenario: The volume pot is fully opened with the cable capacitance passing through, forming the typical operational resonance together with the pickup's inductance. That's the normal behavior and tone we all know. With such a blend pot explained above that is, let's say, in a middle position, the cable capacitance will not reach the pickup because of the attenuation of the pot. The typical operational resonance gets lost and even worse: A low pass will be created, killing the high-end—a really bad scenario.Next month we'll return to our relic'ing project, talking about aging new electronics. Until then ... keep on modding!
The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
We’ve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this season’s most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfather’s love of country music, and his first days in Nashville—as a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of Phish—Paisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature Fender Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake pattern—which some might describe as “hippie puke”—and its surprising origin with Elvis’ guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
I’ve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitar—I still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEK’d. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
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