Bartolini MK-1 (Lakland ##-01 pickups) coil splitting?

[groovaholic]

These pickups are always described as split coil pickups, so I'm wondering if they can be re-wired for series/parallel switching.

Played a 44-01 yesterday and really liked it, but it was even better in passive mode -- and my searches here found LOTS of people pulling out or replacing the stock preamp.

So my thought was to find a used 55-01 and convert it to passive, with series/parallel switches to replace some of the (no longer necessary) pots.

[rojo412]

It can't be done. They are a simple 2-lead wiring.
You can run them both Series/Parallel with a switch (ala Fender S-1 switching), but the pickups themselves can't be mod'd.

You can swap out for better pickups and do that. It's been done numerous times.

[groovaholic]

Ah...bummer.

I didn't dislike the sound of the stock pickups, but they sounded bright and clear which suggested the coils were wired in parallel -- so I was thinking that wiring them in series would get more "meat" out of them.

My personal preference is to run the neck pickup in parallel and the bridge pickup in series, then mix them via a buffered blend so that the output discrepancy is manageable...

I had a G&L L-2000E that I modified to that control scheme and it was a great sounding and incredibly flexible bass.

[rojo412]

I know that people have swapped in the US Barts that have 4 lead and done that exact thing. Same sort of tonality, but more functions.

Adding an S/P definitely adds meat to the stock ones... but only both at once, so not quite the effect you're after.