push-pull pot wiring for coil tap

[bassred]

I have an Epiphone LP. I just got some EMG Select (yeah, I know, they are the low-end ones) humbuckers for it. They are three-wire (ground, humbucked and tapped single coil) .

 

I have push-pull pots.

 

How the **(^#$%#@^$ do I wire this up so that I can use the push pull pots to tap each pickup?

 

There are a billion wiring diagrams for 4 and 5 wire pickups, and most don't really explain the hookup. My eyes are going buggy and I'm about to pass out.....

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[ehedwr]

Have a look at this.

 

 

 

http://www.smitspickups.com/coiltapping.htm

[Stricken]

Take it to a shop and ask them to do it?

[Verne Andru]

Coil "tap" is when the coil windings of a pickup are intercepted part-way through the wind to get lower output. Coil "split" is when you split the 2 coils of a humbucker so only one is active giving a single-coil-type tone. I'll assume you want coil "split."

 

There should be 4 leads coming from each pickup to do this wiring. North Start and North Finish plus South Start and South Finish. They roughly correspond to positive and negative for each pickup. Find a pickup colour code chart, Seymour Duncan has one posted on their site, and decipher which wire is for what.

 

Humbuckers are usually wired so the finish of one coil is attached to the start of the other making the two pickups wired in series. If you only have 3 leads coming from the pickup the third is probably a ground shield or two leads are connected at the pickup and they've only run a combined lead to the control cavity - which is highly unlikely.

 

If the above makes you brain melt, find a tech to do it for you to save yourself a fair bit of grief. To do this mod properly, on pickup needs to be wired differently so when both pickups are engaged in single coil, they humbuck each other.

[Carbohydrates]

 

Find a pickup colour code chart, Seymour Duncan has one posted on their site

 

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schematics/schematics.php?schematic=color_codes

[bassred]

 

Coil "tap" is when the coil windings of a pickup are intercepted part-way through the wind to get lower output. Coil "split" is when you split the 2 coils of a humbucker so only one is active giving a single-coil-type tone. I'll assume you want coil "split." There should be 4 leads coming from each pickup to do this wiring. North Start and North Finish plus South Start and South Finish. They roughly correspond to positive and negative for each pickup. Find a pickup colour code chart, Seymour Duncan has one posted on their site, and decipher which wire is for what. Humbuckers are usually wired so the finish of one coil is attached to the start of the other making the two pickups wired in series. If you only have 3 leads coming from the pickup the third is probably a ground shield or two leads are connected at the pickup and they've only run a combined lead to the control cavity - which is highly unlikely. If the above makes you brain melt, find a tech to do it for you to save yourself a fair bit of grief. To do this mod properly, on pickup needs to be wired differently so when both pickups are engaged in single coil, they humbuck each other.

 

 

Brain not melted. 'coil tap' is an accepted term for the ability to reduce a humbucker to a single coil with a switch, even though it is not technically the correct term, it's what people call it. I know what it is and does, and I know that most of the time there are more leads involved. If you want to do anything with polarity, you need all those wires.

 

I know what I bought, it is a 3-wire humbucker. One wire is the humbucking pair, the third wire is the coil of one of the singles before it becomes part of the pair.

 

The issue I saw was that the diagrams online weren't linking the switch part of the push-pull pot to the pot part.

 

I don't need to take it to a shop, I've worked for years as an audio tech. The crap diagrams on the various sites all showed different wiring's. I like to see a couple people's adaptations that match, but none of them did.

 

I figured it out. after an hour of looking at what was on the web, I just wired them up. They work great! No hum in any positions.

[PunkKitty]

I'm happy to see that you figured it out.

 

On a 4 wire system, 2 wires are typically soldered together and attached to the switch to allow coil tapping. This is done at the switch.

 

On a 3 wire system, those 2 wires are typically connected at the pickup itself and only 1 wire is used for coil tapping.

 

So take the 2 wires that are in the diagram and attached to the switch and substitute the 1 wire (that is really 2 wires attached together) and connect it to the switch for coil tapping.

[inkblot]

Lets say the lugs on the DPDT switch of the push pull pot are numbered like this

 

(pot)

1 2

3 4

5 6

 

Put the humbucker lead to 6, the split lead to 2, and connect 4 to the pickup selector. Pulling up on the push pull will split the pickup. You can use one push pull to split both pickups at once if you want.

[guitarcapo]

 

 

BTW I highly recommend while you are in there to make the two tone pots push pull also (another $15 maybe) and wire it up like this:

 

 

You won't be sorry and it will still look stock. Put puling on the tone pots will produce GLORIOUS tones in combination with those coil tap sounds.

[bassred]

BTW I highly recommend while you are in there to make the two tone pots push pull also (another $15 maybe) and wire it up like this: You won't be sorry and it will still look stock. Put puling on the tone pots will produce GLORIOUS tones in combination with those coil tap sounds.

I don't have all of the polarity options, otherwise, I'd be all over a Jimmy Page style option like that!!

 

Thanks for all your help folks! Got to show her off to my bandmates tonight, and play it through a few nicer amps than mine (she still sounded great!)