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Coil Tapping...


The Trump

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I'm in a pickle.

 

I got a hot rails to put in my Mustang Bridge, but the thing is, I used to have a single coil in there, and now I have a mini-humbucker. The problem with that is that it's got 4 wires coming out of it, instead of two.

 

How can I wire this up so that it's always a humbucker, and not a single coil?

 

Would this be a good idea?

 

A mustang has a out of phase/off/on switch for each pickup, so if I drop a hotrails in the bridge, would that mean that I'd have to redo the switch so that it'd be

 

Single coil / humbucker/ out of phase or something like that?

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To wire it so that it's always a humbucker, solder together the red and white wires and tape them off, then solder the green and bare wire to ground, and the black wire to wherever the signal goes (switches, pots etc). This way you shouldn't have to modify your switch either.

 

If you're combining it with Fender pickups, though, you might have to solder the black (and bare) wire to ground instead, and green to the switch/pot. Otherwise the pickups might end up being out-of-phase when they should be in-phase, causing the little switches to behave wrong.

 

If you want coil split (not coil tap, those are different things), see the instructions here:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/images/products/electric/stratocaster/501015-100.pdf

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Forgive my ignorance but you mentioned that coil tap is not the same as coil split? What exactly is the difference? I always thought they were two phrases for the same thing, splitting a humbucker so only one coil is active...

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The idea is correct and the advice is good, IF your pickup uses the Seymour Duncan color code. If it's a DiMarzio, the colors will be different: black and white are soldered together, red is hot and green is ground. Other brands may have still another color code. If you're not sure, read this: Testing a four-conductor pickup

 

Here a little something you might want to read concerning coil-TAP, coil-SHUNT, coil-SPLIT, etc. A coil-tap is NOT The same as a coil-shunt or split.

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I haven't heard of Hot Rails being used as a generic term for a rail-type humbucker, but then again I'm more of a traditional single-coils-and-PAFs kind of guy anyway. So I'll trust your experience in this and agree that, if the pickup isn't a Duncan, more info is needed to provide the correct wiring scheme.

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