26861335[/URL], member: 309154"]That’s all a little weirdly different from what I’ve heard about wiring things parallel and series, and what people say about split coils and the like. I haven’t experimented with different pickups and tried experimental rewiring things etc. to know for sure myself.
I studied Acoustical Physics - specifically the Physics of musical instruments. I have a degree in this stuff. There are a lot of things people pass around that have no basis in fact, or that make conclusions based on false premises.
For example, a humbucker in a guitar usually means it’s going to have less high frequencies. Why is that? Is it because it cancels hum? No. Is it because it has two coils? No. Then why?
It has less high frequencies for two reasons:
1) Guitar humbuckers have pole pieces at 2 locations on each string. Just like having two pickups on a jazz bass, that means it’s going to have a dip somewhere. Because the two locations are fairly close, that dip is in the high frequencies. By the way, the frequency of the dip (this also applies to the jazz bass) is different on every string - it’s a wavelength filter. So, a dip in the treble = less highs.
2) Most guitar humbuckers have more inductance than the typical single coil pickup. This changes the peak frequency (lowers it), and where the roll off begins. So, more inductance = less highs.
Now, we move to inline jazz hum cancelling pickups. There are a lot of die hard single coil folks that “know” they don’t sound like a single coil - they’re humbuckers, and we know that means less treble - right?
Here’s the thing - most in line hum cancelling jazz pickups don’t have more inductance than the single coils - they’re wound to the same inductance. Yes, there are 2 coils, but each coil has half the magnetic material - the net result is the same inductance. By changing the windings, you can make a hum canceller with less inductance ( a Dimarzio Area J fits this description) - it has MORE high frequencies than most single coils. If you did a good blind A/B test, and there was no hum in either bass, the bass with Area J’s would probably be mistaken for the single coil one. You can also achieve this by wiring the coils in a hum canceller in parallel - indeed, that usually gives you too much high end, but that can be tuned to whatever you want with a loading capacitor.
In line jazz hum cancellers also don’t listen to the string at 2 points - their magnetic circuit geometry is the same as a single coil, albeit with a magnet polarity flip for half the strings.
So, we have a lot of folks that “know” that they don’t sound like single coils, based on reasons that… don’t apply to the situation. Because there are so many people that think this, they keep repeating the same myth, and the myth lives on. When you look at the Physics of what’s going on, however, there is nothing to the myth - it’s not based on any relevant facts.
