A 4-wire humbucker ready for modding.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month, we’ll talk about how to wire triple-shot humbucker pickups. I’ll explain what this means and how to do it, so let’s go.
When you have a humbucker with a traditional 2-conductor wiring, you don’t have any sound variation by itself—only together with another pickup that you can put in parallel or in series with it, in phase, out-of-phase, or half out-of-phase, and so on. With a 4-conductor wiring on your humbucker pickup, you have access to the start and the finish of each coil, and this can be used to get a total of four different tones out of it, whether it’s a bridge or a neck pickup. A 4-conductor wiring results in a total of five wires coming from such humbuckers:
- North coil start / north coil finish
- South coil start / south coil finish
- Ground = bare wire (goes always to ground)
The possible combinations and sounds you can dial in are:
1. Both coils together in series = standard humbucker operation mode.
This is the factory standard way all humbuckers are internally connected when they have a 2-conductor wiring with only hot and ground. This is also the standard way in almost every guitar loaded with one or more humbucker pickups, producing a warm, loud, and fat tone with maximum output and the humbucking function engaged.
2. Single-coil-esque humbucker wiring (both coils together in parallel).
This option gives you a single-coil-like tone but keeps the humbucking function engaged. You won’t get a crystal-clear Strat or Tele tone, but to me it sounds at least single-coil-esque, maybe closer to a P-90 than to a standard single-coil. It sounds different with any humbucker, so it’s a matter of trying it out.
Fig. 1
3. Coil-splitting to the south coil.
This wiring is splitting the humbucker in half, shunting one coil to ground, leaving the other coil engaged like a true single-coil pickup. In this mode, the humbucking function is no longer active, so you’ll receive all kinds of hum and noise, just like with any single-coil pickup. Don’t expect a true Strat or Tele tone. If this is your goal, there are special humbuckers made of two real single-coil pickups. The downside of this special breed is they don’t sound very good as a full humbucker, so it’s always the art of compromising. Splitting to the south coil of the humbucker, which is the screw side, is recommended for neck humbuckers, but can also sound good for bridge humbuckers.
4. Coil-splitting to the north coil.
This wiring follows the same idea as #3, but will leave the north coil, which is the slug side, active. This version is recommended for a bridge humbucker because it gives a fuller sound compared to the screw side.
To clear up some terminology, there are several descriptions given to the individual coils of a humbucker and depending on the manufacturer of the pickup, they are sometimes used side by side: The (non-adjustable) slug coil is also called north coil or inside coil, while the (adjustable) screw coil is called south coil or outside coil.
Having two 4-conductor humbuckers in an HH guitar will result in four different sounds from each pickup. Plus, you can combine them for a total of 16 different sounds, which is a lot of choice, not counting possible additional options like phasing.
What sounds like a good plan or must-have often turns into a real issue, because space is your enemy! Try to do this on a Les Paul and you’ll face that there isn’t enough space for all the additional switches that are needed, and that’s the same with a lot of other guitars. So, some years ago Seymour Duncan came up with a clever product called the “Triple Shot.”
The good news is, you can get the exact same performance from a rotary switch, which costs only a fraction of a Triple Shot. The sad news is, you need one rotary switch for each pickup, and, naturally, you need space to place them somewhere on the guitar.
This is a humbucker mounting ring with two integrated slide switches and a ribbon cable going from the switches to a small printed circuit board (PCB), which is the connection terminal for the five wires coming from the humbucker plus a shielded output cable. The Triple Shot is available in different colors and shapes, so it’ll fit virtually any guitar, no matter if it has a flat (Strat, Tele, SG, etc.) or arched (Les Paul, 335, etc.) top. With the Triple Shot, you don’t have to drill any new holes into your guitar, and you don’t lose any controls by replacing them with switches or the like.
Operating the Triple Shot is easy, but it takes some getting used to. Because of the two slide switches, you need to know what combination will produce each sound, which can cause some confusion at the beginning. Another benefit is that the optical appearance of your guitar is not altered in any way and it’s easy to remove if you need or want to. An often-heard downside is the high price for the Triple Shot ($39 street). Personally, I think it’s worth the price because it’s high quality, but if you’re on a budget, this can be a deal-killer.
The good news is, you can get the exact same performance from a rotary switch, which costs only a fraction of a Triple Shot. The sad news is, you need one rotary switch for each pickup and, naturally, you need space to place them somewhere on the guitar.
For this you need a 2P4T rotary switch, which means it has two poles (comparable to the standard 5- and 3-way switches you all know) and four switching positions. Physically you have five lugs on each switching stage, with one of them being the output of this stage. The lugs are numbered from 1 to 4 and the output on a rotary switch is always labelled with a “C” for “common.” The rotary switch wiring you need is illustrated in Fig. 1.
Take care to get a good-quality switch. These switches are available in a wide range of quality and prices. There are open ones, like the one shown in the diagram, and closed ones. The trick is to connect both switching stages (output of stage #1 goes into stage #2), which is something you already know from your standard 5- or 3-way switch.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2 shows how to connect your 4-conductor humbucker to the rotary switch. With this wiring you receive the following switching matrix:
- Both coils in series (standard humbucker)
- Both coils in parallel (hum-free single-coil-like tone)
- Slug coil as single-coil
- Screw coil as single-coil
I chose the Seymour Duncan color chart for the diagram, but you can transfer it to any brand humbucker using color code transfer charts on the internet.
That’s it for now. Next month we’ll continue our relic’ing project, focusing on the neck and fretboard. We’re getting close to the finish line on that one, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding
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Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.
This outing of Dipped In Tone kicks off with an exciting update from Zach Broyles’ camp: He’s opening a brick-and-mortar guitar shop in Nashville, called High Voltage Guitars. Opening on October 8, the store will carry gear from Two-Rock, Divided By 13, Dr. Z, Castedosa, Fano, Novo, and of course Mythos Pedals. Zach hints that there might be some handwired JHS pedals from Josh Scott himself, too, and Rhett reveals that he plans to consign some of his guitars at the shop.
The business side of Zach’s new venture brings them to a key piece of today’s episode: Rhett and Zach aren’t running charities. They do what they do to make money; guitars, gear, podcasting, and content creation are their literal jobs. And they’re not as glamorous and breezy as most armchair commentators might guess.
Want to do what Rhett and Zach do? Welcome to the club. The guitar-influencer field is what one might call “oversaturated” at the moment, and it’s difficult to break out—but not impossible. As our hosts explain, it requires putting in 60-hour work weeks, a diverse skillset, a knack for catching people’s attention, and a certain level of genuineness. Rhett knows this path well, and he has hard-earned advice for staying true to oneself while building a following in the gear world.
Tune in to learn why Rhett thinks Fretboard Summit, a three-day guitar festival organized by Fretboard Journal, blows NAMM out of the water and builds legitimate connections between guitarists, and catch the duo dipping a Dick Dale-inspired, all-Fender rig.
Get 10% off your order at stewmac.com/dippedintone
Galloup’s Plek tech Adam Winarski preps a Yamaha acoustic for the machine.
Presently, many certified guitar-repair specialists possess the expertise required to deliver an instrument that both sounds and plays wonderfully. The standards set by manufacturers and distributors have significantly risen, safeguarded by rigorous quality protocols to guarantee the best possible acoustic experience for customers. Additionally, lutherie training has raised the bar for critical processes, and one of the most tricky is fretwork.
Traditional fretwork once involved manual labor, with technicians utilizing sandbags or similar supports to steady the neck as they straightened it with a truss rod during the filing process. A notable advancement in this field came in the mid 1970s when Don Teeter, an author and repair expert, imposed a new method: fixing the guitar body to the bench and using blocks to maintain the neck in a playing position. This refinement was one of many in the continued quest to produce superior instruments by standardized methods.
An example of the Plek’s readings from an acoustic guitar.
Photo courtesy of Galloup Guitars
In the late 1970s, another pivotal innovation was introduced by Dan Erlewine. He created an advanced fret jig with a specialized body-holding system and neck supports, adding another layer of precision to the repair process. During my collaboration with Dan in 1985, we developed a rotating neck jig that counterbalanced the forces of gravity, keeping the instrument in its playing orientation while adjusting the neck supports. This step represented a significant leap in establishing control and standardization of fretwork procedures in our industry. By 1986, our approach had evolved into a freestanding workstation coupled with a sophisticated hold-down mechanism and enhanced neck supports, culminating in increased accuracy, efficiency, and consistency. Over the decades, the Erlewine/Galloup rotating neck jig has become a benchmark in numerous shops, enhancing fretwork performance.
"This step represented a significant leap in establishing control and standardization of fretwork procedures in our industry."
By the 1990s, automated and computerized technologies permeated the guitar manufacturing and repair sectors. Initially applied by import companies in the mass production of guitars, the technology, although expediting processes, did not immediately achieve high execution standards. However, the tech dramatically improved over time, with computer-driven systems eventually transforming the industry. Contemporary automated production utilizing such advancements meets exceedingly high standards of precision. Some bespoke guitar manufacturers, such as Steve Andersen, were pioneers in adopting these methods, but it was companies like Taylor that established them in the modern era.
Inevitably, the progression of technology extended beyond the mere production of parts. Around 1995, German engineer Gerd Anke envisioned the integration of computer-assisted technology into enhancing instrument playability, giving rise to Plek technology, which uses computers to precisely measure and analyze the various components of a guitar, like neck relief, fret height, nut and bridge specs, and more. Nashville guitar-repair tech Joe Glaser was among the first to recognize the machine’s value, followed by San Francisco luthier Gary Brawer. When Heritage Guitar Inc. invested in a Plek machine, the guitar industry could no longer disregard the significance of this innovation.
“The machine’s scanning data confirmed that there was one nature of an ideal fret plane, done by hand or machine, and unsurprisingly, it conformed exactly to what physics predicts, not personal mojo.”
In the spring of 2022, Galloup Guitars obtained its first Plek machine. Promptly, our technician Adam Winarski paved the way for the Plek’s integration in our shop. Now, it’s a rarity for an instrument to leave our shop without having undergone Plek analysis and machining. Impressed by the results of our integration, we created “Intro to Plek” as a course for all students enrolled at the Galloup School of Lutherie, offering our students a practical introduction to this technology. We furthered this educational initiative with a comprehensive one-week intensive “Plek Certification Training Course” for both students and the public. This advanced Plek course serves those seeking to boost their knowledge base and employability in this high-precision field.
Plek is rapidly becoming an industry standard for major manufacturers and smaller shops alike. However, this does not mean that those without access to this technology cannot execute proficient fretwork. Personally, I continue to use my Erlewine/Galloup neck jig—not only out of nostalgia, but also because it remains an excellent method for delivering accurate and reliable guitars. Still, it’s undeniable that the process of fretting, fret dressing, and analytics of fretted instruments has undergone significant transformation, resulting in better sounding—and playing—guitars. And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about.