Coil Split AS4255C Alnico neck humbucker? Something else?

[TaperChuck]

Can someone answer a quick question for me?

The red and white leads from the AS4255C Alnico neck humbucker in my Tribute ASAT Classic Bluesboy are taped off on my guitar.

If I ground both the red and white wires does that do the coil tap?

I used a pair of alligator clips to check it and it does something. I just want to make sure that's the proper way to utilize the coil tap on that pickup.

Thanks In advance.

[guitar_ed]

Hi,

I could be wrong here, but my experience is that everybody uses pretty much the wiring nomenclature (colors) when building pickups. Believing this to be the case, the folks at Seymour Duncan have some wiring diagrams for coil-splitting a HB.

edg

[TaperChuck]

Yes, thank you. I found a series/parallel schematic over there. I did my best and figured out the correct wire colors for the G&L humbucker. Unfortunately they are not the same universally. I did the mod using a push/pull switch. The results are not as awesome as I was hoping for, so I'm going to keep experimenting.

FWIW, the series sound is thinner and a little bit brighter. But, not better than the parallel wiring.

I may just end up putting a P-90 in there.

[dhgleaves]

Can someone answer a quick question for me?

The red and white leads from the AS4255C Alnico neck humbucker in my Tribute ASAT Classic Bluesboy are taped off on my guitar.

If I ground both the red and white wires does that do the coil tap?

I used a pair of alligator clips to check it and it does something. I just want to make sure that's the proper way to utilize the coil tap on that pickup.

Thanks In advance.

I don't know the answer, but I think you're talking about coil splitting, not coil tapping.

David

[neutralomen]

yes a friendly PSA. Coil tapping is a totally different thing from coil splitting.

A coil split, which is now very common, is when you deactivate one of the coils in a humbucker and turn it into a single coil.

Coil tapping is where you interrupt the circuit in the wire winding process and add a lead somewhere through your wind. This way, you can get a low-wind, lower output coil and a high-wind, higher output coil in the same pickup. Taps are actually quite rare and more fragile/prone to failing unless made by very skilled hands(thick AWG wire helps too).

[TaperChuck]

Thanks guys.

[TaperChuck]

I"m still not happy with the way this guitar sounds. No matter what I do I don't like the way the AS4255C humbucker sounds. I have wired the 4 conductor humbucker so the two sides run in parallel and in series and neither sound good to me. I installed a push pull switch on the tone control and I did a split coil option by having the pulled position ground the red and white wires too. Though this option sounds best, I still don't like it much.

I do like the bridge pickup and I like middle blade switch position on this guitar.

I've heard that maybe disconnecting the humbucker from the 250K tone switch makes that pickup sound better. I don't know the best way to do that.

I don't want to replace the tone control with a 500K, because I'm afraid that'll make the bridge pickup too bright.

I'd appreciate any solutions any of you have actually tried to brighten up the AS4255C.

Of course I can get a different neck pickup, but I'd rather figure out a way to make the stock pickup more useful for me first.

[Tooslowhand]

Not all manufacturers use the same wiring layouts for their pickups. For instance I have humbuckers from Jason Lollar and Seymour Duncan and they are different. You need to correctly identify the start and finish wires for both the driven and slug coils and wire them properly otherwise they will not sound good when hooked up. I would contact G&L to see what the color code is for the pickup they used in your Bluesboy. Also impedance differences between a series / parallel / split humbucker can necessitate changes in the tone circuit resistors and capacitors. Made more challenging by the fact that your guitar only has a single tone control for the entire pickup stack. It will make it more difficult to select component values and likely anything you choose will be a compromise.