Huge thanks to ICBM . . .

Paul_C

for the gift of six usable sounds from my guitar

I've wired coil cut switches lots of times for customers as well as for myself but always felt the difference between the two was so drastic as to make it difficult to use without making adjustments elsewhere.

Now it's quite possible that I've read this elsewhere as I've read an awful lot of guitar modding stuff over the years, but for me the first time it stuck in my head long enough for me to make the effort to try it was a post (quite a while ago) by our very own ICBM.

I finally got round to trying out the mod (putting a resistor in line with the coil cut wire, or in my case, two different resistors) on my own guitar a couple of months ago and absolutely love the result.

Here's a very quick demo recorded on my little Tascam recorder sitting on top of my Katana, playing through the clean channel.

Bridge/Both/Neck with coil cut followed by the same with full humbuckers (probably (because I can't remember what they are) Bare Knuckle Black Dogs).

http://www.arrowheadguitars.co.uk/pics/pickup%20demo.mp3

I often prefer the sound of the coil cut to the full humbucker, and it's really given me an awful lot more joy than the previous coil cut sounds

ICBM

Don't give me the credit, I nicked it from PRS!

I think the idea may originally go back to Bill Lawrence - it would be typical of the sort of clever variations on standard ideas he often used - but I'm not sure.

Paul_C

I have to give you credit for mentioning it a number of times so that I finally got off my arse and tried it out

I spent an evening trying a number of different resistors to get the sounds in the demo (they sound even better in the room) and as I've said, the result is so much better that I felt the urge to a) do the little demo and 2) give thanks where it was due

sm55onl

The 4th and 6th set of sounds were the best - which settings were these ?

Paul_C

4th bridge humbucker, 6th neck humbucker

Though for me the important bit is that I now have 6 sounds that all sound good and all are useable, depending on what I'm trying to do.

clarkefan

Cool you found the right resistor value/s for you My mind is spinning now, maybe a trim pot would be fun

Can you tell us a little more about the differences in values you tried?  What did you not like about the values you rejected, and liked in the ones you thought were right?

And what did you mean by two resistors? Or is that a trade secret? (which would be fine of course )

Paul_C

I wrote them down somewhere, I'll see if I can find them

Two resistors - one for each pickup as they needed to be different to do what I wanted.

I didn't have lots to choose from, but my thought process was to find one where it was clear that things had changed, but not changed too much, if that makes sense.

So I didn't start with a sound in mind, but I was lucky enough to have two resistors in my bits box that sounded nice enough to leave in.

I did consider a trim pot as an option but as things worked out ok I didn't need to. If I was doing it for a customer I might use that process so as to arrive at a suitable value a bit quicker.

ICBM

The PRS values are 1.1K for the neck pickup and 2.2K for the bridge, if I remember correctly. 1.1K isn't a very common value, but 1K or 1.2K should be very close - even though it does appear to be quite sensitive.

Paul_C

I do have a habit of scribbling things on the back of EB string packets and the workshop is full of them

I've got a feeling one of them is .816k but I covered them in heatshrink to avoid accidental earthing so I can't say for sure.

thegummy

Just want to take this opportunity to also thank ICBM for the several times he's helped answer my questions and for sharing his expertise.

People like him are one of the great things about the internet.

p90fool

It's interesting to play around with these values, even some radically different ones. 

I've split 498t pickups via a 47k resistor in the past, which gives you something more akin to a P90 type tone than a Strat tone. 

I got the idea from a guitar mods booklet which came free with a copy of Guitar Player in the 1980s, but it was definitely @ICBM who reminded me to go and dig it out! 

normula1

I used a pair of multi-turn trimmers in my PRS and tweaked to my fave sounds. When I then measured, the values were pretty much bank on the standard PRS values.
In a partscaster, I did the same for the bridge BK Mule humbucker to match with the two single coils and when measured that one came out just shy of 4.5k