All my basses have had 2 double coil pups on them (w/ active electronics). They have punch and definition with plentiful bottom end, heavy without being too muddy, and I have achieved great stage sound with these basses. I would however like to clean up the mud a bit more. What kind of sound characteristics would I get from a bass with a single coil at the bridge and a split coil at the neck? Better definition? Would I be losing some of that bottom end? Or do they just give a bright jazzy tone? General application will be extreme metal (and yes it does matter, people actually do hear me on stage).
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DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
You would get single coil hum for starters.
As long as you keep them both on full volume,or equal volume,you will not get 60 cycle hum.Depending on where you stand in relation to your amp,or lights,especially florescent lighting,and one pickup is on alone,you will get hum. As you turn the volume up on the second pickup,the hum will disappear.I have a set of Nordstrand NJ4s and I leave them both wide open,and they are really hard hitting and full sounding,but completely quiet,no hum,buzz,anything when I'm not playing.You can back off the volume on the neck or bridge pickup about a quarter turn,YMMV,before the hum starts to get loud.I love the sound of them both on full,and on this particular bass I won't hesitate to back off the volume on one pickup or the other to get the sound I want.When you are playing live with a Marshall next to you ,you will not hear it.These are the only pickups,in over forty years of playing,that band members and sound men have commented about my sound.This has been my number one since I put these in.
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
This is not correct. If there is nothing to balance the single coil it will get hum regardless, you have an odd number of coils.
For what it's worth, I currently have a single coil neck pickup and a humbucker bridge pickup in one of my basses. I play pretty much exclusively on the humbucker to remove the hum (plus I like the added bite.)
I misread the post and thought the OP wanted to go with 2 single coils as my post implied.You are correct that an odd number of coils will always hum.
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
No, I do not. I think it has a lot more to do with position and the particular pickup than it has to do with it being a humbucker.
You lose a degree of highs going to humbuckers, that is why people still use single coils regardless of the noise. I'm not technical enough to give you an in-depth explanation, sorry.
Good discussion. In my experience, there is a "presence" in the high end of a SC that no humbucker quite gets, though they rule the low end. Years ago I tried lots of dual (usually stacked) coil J pickups in search of one that copped the SC sound without hum. ...no luck. I think it's perhaps still the holy grail of J-pickups, unless somebody knows of a new development in this area. The Lane Poor J-style offering came pretty close, but they were low output and are now scarcer than hen's teeth. So, to answer your question, you can expect "bite", and you can also expect "hum". 
My main bass is a P/J, (it plays the best, of what I own, and is the most comfortable). I've tried several p/u combos on it...all of the single/dual combos had 2 problems...the hum did drive me crazy, and the impedance mis-match never made for a good blend to my liking. The first dual coil I tried was a stacked coil jazz, ..it was the worst sounding jazz pickup I've heard. After several combos, and some reading here I bought a GZR p/j set...great balance, the j cuts through a mix very well, and growls and snarls with the best of 'em. Though it does not sound like a single coil, the bass has completely useful blend now, a lot of versatility, and just sounds great, with no hum. I'll not try single/dual coil again, if I do another p/j it may not be the GZR's (I probably won't want 2 basses that sound identical), but, I'll go for a set of humbuckers that sound great, there's so much available, and a lot of variance in sound to be had, (with no hum). My Jazz bass with Super 55's doesn't hum either, they don't sound like singles, but that bass has all the sparkle, and zing it ever had, with excellent top end clarity, and the p/u's don't have to be at the same volume to sound good anymore.
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That's exactly what I was trying to clarify, thanx. Don't worry I don't need a tech course as to why, I just wanted some third-party input so I know I'm not imagining things.
Well, what you mean is there are "jazz-style" pickups out there that cancel hum. In other words they have a single line of poles that pickup the strings at just one place. However, while single coil pickups do indeed have just one coil, these have two coil arranged either side by side or one above the other. So technically they aren't 'single coil" pickups.
The problem and challenge of them is that by having two coils instead of one, you end up changing the inductance and so forth and that changes the tone. Hence they tend to not sound quite like true single coil pickups. So pickup makers use their "art" to somehow try to get them to sound like true single coil pickups. Some are more successful than others.
Two that I like best are Nordstrands (get out wallet) who also make true single coil jobbies and SCN pickups which are a stacked coil type. Of course what tone you like best is all about your preference which is why people still like single coils in spite of the hum.
If that's the case, then these should sell like hot cakes. I tried all kinds of dual-coil j products over the years (DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, Fender, etc) and ended up back at my rewound '64 single coils, since none of the humbuckers copped "that sound". Though I resigned myself to living with hum (not a huge deal) it would still be nice to find that SC sound in a humbucker. Maybe I'll need to give a Wilde a whirl!
