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Author Topic: Coil Splitting An Epiphone Les Paul Special II.. while maintaining same volume?  (Read 6632 times)

Offline dominant_chord2005

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Its been awhile since I posted here in Guitar Central...normally I just lurk for new gears at affordable prices but my quest to improve my tone  led me to revisit my home in 6 string craftsmanshift...Guitar central... as most of my knowledge to improve my skill and tone I got from here.

I don't want to sound like a noob  but then  again my lack of advance electronics knowledge there puts me in that perspective. I therefore seek help from our tone gurus and mods enthusiasts  here in guitar central.is there anyway you can help me with the ff:


My LP special II is candy apple red   equipped with 1 std volume and tone w/ a three way switch. Since the stock pickups no lonmger has that tone that I wanted I fitted my guitar with 2 Artec open coil Alnico humbuckers w/c i am happy with the results.  After countless attempts of tinkering I was able to do a successful split after fitting with a A500K push pull switch based on the seymour duncan  and artec wiring diagrams. To make it sound bright I replaced the current cap with a .022mf orange drop which i got from epektos.

However the guitar suddenly lost major chunk of volume when engaged on  single coil mode. when plugged in direct , the sound verty much appears more choked down....parang sakal na sakal in our terms and it doesnt produce a more wide open volume while on humbucker and a more stratish open single coil sound that I'm after....di balanse ang lakas at brilliance   to make it easier to describe.     

After researching further, still no definite answers on how to balance out the volume. It seems like a dead end.   

I appreciate any help from anyone who has experience on this....  its just a means for me to maximize a guitar that i love to use.

I'm a strat guy...been like that eversince..but I wanted to explore the possibility of having a strat and an LP in a single guitar, and BAMF's suggestion to do a coil split led to this.

Thanks brother in Philmusic. Hoping we'll have EB's in the future that I can join you guys again....





"Practice makes perfect."

Offline r_chino18

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You really can't balance the volume of a humbucker whose coils are in series and from that in coil split.

Take note, when in series (full humbucker), you have two coils working. When in coil split, you are grounding one of the coils so that only one of them works. This will also result to a volume loss of around half.

You can try parallel wiring, but you'd need to use two push/pull pots. Two coils will still work and are hum cancelling but they will work in parallel. Volume drop is lesser compared to coil split. Around 30% volume drop lang ito.



There's also another factor being considered when doing coil splits. Take note of the DC resistance of the pickup. Since it will literally be split in half, the overall output and sound will also be affected. You regular strat pickups are around 6-7 kohms DC resistance. If you have a humbucker with a DC resistance of around 8-10 kohms and you decide to do a coil split, you'll result to a single coil with around 4-5 kohms DC resistance. Too low and it will sound thinner and really weak.

Coil splitting can only get you so close to a strat sound. Other variables also come into play like the hardware material of the guitar, scale length, wood, etc..
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 02:05:09 PM by r_chino18 »

Offline lolwat

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since humbuckers use two coils whose individual outputs are combined, deactivating one of them effectively halves the output. Maybe you can try parallel wiring the humbuckers to get a slightly strattier sound while still using both coils, but I think there would still be an audible loss in output.

A workaround i use personally is to utilize a compressor pedal in order to balance out the difference in volume among my pickups (mine is in HSH config), but this significantly reduces your dynamic range, which some prize highly. Another way would be to have a clean boost pedal engaged every time you split the coils in order to match the volume of the humbuckers. I'm sure with some elbow grease, one would be able to install such a preamp into a guitar's electronics cavity and make it switchable to boot.

If you are interested in the latter option (clean boost), here's a circuit i built through schematics on the internet. it's pretty nice, and relatively easy to put together: http://www.muzique.com/schem/mosfet.htm

Offline Al_Librero

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even going from series to parallel results in a loss of output. the bottom line is that there's no going around it. with that said, i think a series/parallel switching scheme is much more useful than coil splitting or tapping (i've tried all of them).
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Offline fizz450_03

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i think may volume loss talaga. my epi pro II came with split coil feature, pag lipat to single coils nawawalan ng good part ng volume and the distinctive hum comes in  :-P
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