Wiring Single Coils in Series

[Seryaph]

I will soon be ordering a strat style body and neck from warmoth and my ideas for the pickups were to get:

Rumpelstiltskin Gypsy neck pickup

Rumpel Experience middle pickup (reverse wound)

Rumpel Experience bridge pickup (over wound)

If I wire the neck and the middle pickup in series they will in essence, become a humbucker, correct? So would I still get the hot nasty tone of a humbucker you can buy or do the pickups have to be right next to each other (like regular humbuckers you can buy at the store are) to get said tone? Would that tone correspond to the 2 selection position of the 5-way switch or would it have that tone whenever any of the two pickups were involved?

 

[exalted]

Wiring in series does indeed turn it into a humbucker...but it won't sound *quite* like a humbucker you'd buy from a store...If I recall correctly, they aren't quite as crunchy, since they're further apart.

And yes, it would only be a humbucker in position 2. However, you could wire it like a normal strat, but then use a push-pull to go in series.

 

[Seryaph]

Hmm, so it wouldn't have quite the same tone, but perhaps a little more growl than just regularly using position 1 and 2?

If I wired them to a push/pull pot (are those the ones that are called pull/pull pots in the hardware section of warmoth.com? If not then what is the difference?) would I essentially create a by-pass for the "humbucker" say with pot pushed down for the humbucking in position 2?

In other words, with the pot pulled up I would have

1 - Neck
2 - Neck/ Middle
3 - Middle
4 - Middle/Bridge
5 - Bridge

With the pot pushed down I would have a humbucker on 2. That is really awesome if so. Are there any other fancy things I can do like that?

 

[ironiguana]

Are there any other fancy things I can do like that?

I did this wiring with my single coil guitar and like it.  Gets you a bunch of different parallel and series combos with only 1 switch.

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/mikerichardson.php

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

If I wire the neck and the middle pickup in series they will in essence, become a humbucker, correct?

Series and parallel are both humbucking.  The hum-cancelling effect has to do with the orientation of the coils and polarity of the magnet.  RWRP, or reverse wound reverse polarity is where the magic happens.  It can be either series or parallel.  Series yields a higher output and fatter sound.  Parallel sounds thinner.

 

[bob7point7]

+1 to everything posted here. Wiring 2 strat pickups in series doesn't give you a traditional 'humbucker' tone, but it does give you a fatter, higher output sound that is hum-cancelling (assuming one of them is the middle pickup), while still sounding like a strat. The guitarnuts schematic that ironiguana posted seems like a great way to go.

-Bobbie

 

[Seryaph]

Ok,  I am definitely getting the middle pickup RW/RP.

You'll have to excuse my noobishness when it comes to wiring electronics but can someone help me decipher that schematic that ironiguana posted?


Are all of the dots in the middle the connection points to the 5-way switch? And what happens when you wire two pickups in series and 1/2 out of phase? Oh and does he have 4 pots in total? 2 tone, 1 volume and a push/pull?

This schematic is confusing me.

 

[greywolf]

I wired my Warmoth Tele with a 4 way switch so I get the pickups in parallel in position 2 and series in 4 .

I'm running Texas Specials and the series does produce more juice , better for distortion work , to me it sound more like a hot P-90 than a PAF ( I have both in other guitars) .

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Ok,  I am definitely getting the middle pickup RW/RP.

Most Strat sets nowadays, if it's spec'd as a middle pickup, it's usually already RWRP.  Since you're buying them separately, double check that when ordering.