So, had an idea exchange with a really killer tech (Walter) on another thread Peavey T-40 pickups and wiring - cut red wire? and wanted to share the results. This may be old news to many here, but I haven't come across exactly this style of coil splitting before on a 3 wire pickup.
We were discussing coil splitting the T40/T45 Toasters/Blades. These don't have the typical 4 wire hookup as some humbuckers, but a 3 wire, where the series connection wire is connected at the pickup and that single red wire is there to short to ground for single coil mode. With standard mounting orientation and typical wiring (white hot, black ground, red split wire), the pickups split to the bridge side coil. I wanted to split to inside coils on my T-42.5 (T45 neck on a Foundation body with Toaster pickups and a DPDT switch for splitting both pickups to single coil) so I rotated the bridge pickup 180 degrees so the bridge pickup inside coil was split active. It worked great, sounded great. I was happy.
Well... Walter mentioned that the trick would be to split to opposite coils so you can take advantage of the north and south coil polarities and get hum cancelling in split mode. He had a way of doing it, but I thought more simply: what if you treat one side of the DPDT switch as the usual red split-wire-to-ground on the neck pickup (to get the inside/bridge coil) and then treat the other side of the switch like a little ABY switcher--selecting between the full on series humbucker (with the white hot wire) or the red split wire to hot for single coil mode--which would then activate the inside/neck coil on the bridge pickup.
I went and did the quick and easy rewire and got the results I hoped for-in phase, hum cancelling in split mode. I then rotated the bridge pickup back 180 degrees (to standard orientation) and now have the exact same tonality, but no noise. The only hum I get is in split mode if I don't have the pickups set at the same volume. All it took was soldering the white and red pickup wires to the switch and adding a short wire from the switch to the volume pot.
This little inspiration just made my wacky bass even cooler!
We were discussing coil splitting the T40/T45 Toasters/Blades. These don't have the typical 4 wire hookup as some humbuckers, but a 3 wire, where the series connection wire is connected at the pickup and that single red wire is there to short to ground for single coil mode. With standard mounting orientation and typical wiring (white hot, black ground, red split wire), the pickups split to the bridge side coil. I wanted to split to inside coils on my T-42.5 (T45 neck on a Foundation body with Toaster pickups and a DPDT switch for splitting both pickups to single coil) so I rotated the bridge pickup 180 degrees so the bridge pickup inside coil was split active. It worked great, sounded great. I was happy.
Well... Walter mentioned that the trick would be to split to opposite coils so you can take advantage of the north and south coil polarities and get hum cancelling in split mode. He had a way of doing it, but I thought more simply: what if you treat one side of the DPDT switch as the usual red split-wire-to-ground on the neck pickup (to get the inside/bridge coil) and then treat the other side of the switch like a little ABY switcher--selecting between the full on series humbucker (with the white hot wire) or the red split wire to hot for single coil mode--which would then activate the inside/neck coil on the bridge pickup.
I went and did the quick and easy rewire and got the results I hoped for-in phase, hum cancelling in split mode. I then rotated the bridge pickup back 180 degrees (to standard orientation) and now have the exact same tonality, but no noise. The only hum I get is in split mode if I don't have the pickups set at the same volume. All it took was soldering the white and red pickup wires to the switch and adding a short wire from the switch to the volume pot.
This little inspiration just made my wacky bass even cooler!
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