Coil Tapping on My Bass?

[davecanady]

I'm looking at a pair of Artec Neo Traditional Mini HB's to replace the HB's on my Epiphone viola bass. They are a little hotter than the originals (also made by Artec) The tech said they were designed to be split and if I wanted, I could use some push/pull knobs, split both, and not even change the look of the bass.

What tones do I get with single coil pups? Would this be useful or just more electronics to go wrong.

All your humble opinions would be greatly appreciated.

[lmfreeman9]

I like this idea. A single coil pickup is more organic and natural sounding to my ear.
I have 2 G&L's. My L-1000 is stock-a great design. 3 way switch=single coil, HB and sc with bass boost. I am about to modify a Peavey T-45 to the same thing.

More to your situation. I modded my L-2000 E to have the single coil option in addition to series and parallel which are stock. Series is very bassy and parallel is more of a full range sound. I found this to be very useful options.

[SGD Lutherie]

Single coils are brighter. Humbuckers have more mids and lows and less highs. That's it. They both sound natural and "organic" (what's organic sound like, a house plant?) Pickups are electronic, not organic.

Humbuckers are just two single coils, usually wired in series. A jazz bass with both pickups on is also like a humbucker in parallel, only the coils are farther apart.

Also single coils hum, so if that bothers you, you might want to wire up the switch for series/parallel. Parallel wired humbuckers sound very similar to single coils, but without the hum.

[davecanady]

Great Information. Thank you both. My bass has two volume and one tone knob. He mentioned:
Single neck & HB bridge
HB neck & Single bridge
Single & Single
HB & HB
We did not discuss series vs parallel but I will discuss this with my tech. Often being the sound guy, I'm not a big fan of hum.

[dmusic148]

I think you'll find that single/parallel isn't terribly useful- they sound very similar. I'd go with series/single(outer coils) on each pup to get the widest range of tones.
Not much more to go wrong than you already have- just a bit more wiring, and of course the push/pull pots are a little more complicated, but modern stuff is pretty durable. I wouldn't be concerned.