To expand the tonal possibilities of an HSH guitar (or to simply extend the tones a humbucker pickup can produce), there is a wiring mod that can change the behavior of a HB pickup, which normally works in series (one coil after the other), to make it work in parallel.
While the series wiring is used to achieve that fuller sound typical of a humbucker, the parallel wiring is quite interesting, too: it sounds a little brighter and has less output, yet it’s very usable in many contexts (and plus it keeps its noise canceling feature).
A simple DPDT switch may be use to change from series to parallel wiring. I prefer using a push-push (or push-pull) pot for the tone control, but even an extra DPDT mini toggle switch is a good solution.
Here are the wiring diagrams for an HSH guitar with a 5-way switch, a volume control and a tone control (push-pull or push-push).
Please notice that autosplit in position 2 (bridge + middle) works only when the bridge HB is used in its classic series mode.
If you experience phase cancellation problems in position 2 or 4, just invert two wires of the corresponding humbucker and you’re done:
– green and red wires for DiMarzio
– green and black wires for Seymour Duncan
May 26th 2019May 26th 2019
