Seymour Duncan BG-1400 wiring advice

Mike58

Hi

A friend of mine is dropping in his Tele for a rewire, it has a BG-1400 bridge p/u fitted.

As this is a stacked p/u with high DC resistance would it be reasonable to use a higher value pot or as the stacked coils tend to fight each other and sound like a lower wind just use 250k.

I can’t find any SD info for recommended pot values.

I have seen folk use up to I Meg with this unit, but that was on an Esquire build, this wiring has to work with a standard single coil neck p/u as well.

Secondary point : as this is a 4 wire p/u I was going to wire it in coil-split mode when combining with neck single coil ( to improve balance) BUT as it’s a stacked single coil is this a good idea, do stacked coil splits work the same as humbuckers ? .

Thanks

Mike

ICBM

I would use a 250K pot. It's designed to replace a standard Tele pickup so is likely to be voiced for a 250K - other Duncan pickups intended for fitting into Fender guitars are.

You don't want to coil-split it - if you do that with a stacked humbucker, the sound gets louder and *more* midrangy, because you're removing the out-of-phase characteristic which makes it sound like the single coil it's emulating.

If you want a lower-output brighter tone, you need to switch it to parallel wiring, but you can't do that with a standard 3-way switch at the same time as selecting the neck pickup. In fact, it should balance well with the neck pickup anyway - the lower-impedance pickup tends to dominate a parallel combination, which will offset the higher output of the bridge.

Funkfingers

I have only ever used my CS Tele Lead Stack pickup with A250k pots. 

I have recently discovered that the same is true for SD Hot Rails for Telecaster. A250k pots are the correct choice. 

Once again, this goes to show the near irrelevance of DC resistance meter readings for pickups.

I almost always use my pickup through overdriven valve amplification. If I wanted a touch more trebly twang for clean sounds, I would change to steel, aluminium or titanium bridge saddles.

Split and parallel modes offer no worthwhile benefit.

IIMO, the only times when split and parallel modes might be appropriate are for a HH circuit employing a 2502N five-way selector switch. i.e. Duncan SHRT-1B and -1N in a "Metal" Telecaster.

Mike58

Thanks for the comments, they are a great help.
I had a look at the guitar yesterday and it has the matching stacked neck p/u so no need to be messing around with fancy wiring . Advice well taken on the 250k pots.
weirdly tho the output of the bridge pickup was weak , my Tele with a ‘52 classic bridge blew it away… wasn’t expecting that.
it measures correct at dc28k so I’ll wire it up straight to output jack and if it’s still weak then it’s toast.
thanks again
mike

ICBM

Stacked humbuckers can sound weak and thin compared to true single coils - it's inherent in the way they work, using two overwound coils out of phase can't avoid cancelling some of the signal as well as the hum. There are ways of trying to isolate the lower coil from the string signal, but the laws of physics dictate that it can't ever be completely successful.

What you could try is to partially split the coils - that might give a good compromise between reducing the signal cancellation while retaining most of the hum cancellation. First, you need to find out which is the upper coil - if it's not obvious from the directions the coil wires take from the eyelets, you will need to temporarily bypass each coil and see which gives the strongest output - that's the upper coil. Then, instead of bypassing the other coil completely, use a resistor instead - I have no idea of the value, it could be anything from about 1K to 100K - the normal values for a standard humbucker are in the 1-5K region, but that means nothing here.

If full hum cancelling is important, I've found the DiMarzio Area series sound much better than any Duncan stacked pickups, at least for a Strat - I haven't tried the Tele one.

Funkfingers

ICBM said:

If full hum cancelling is important, I've found the DiMarzio Area series sound much better than any Duncan stacked pickups, at least for a Strat - I haven't tried the Tele one.

+1

I find that - like many other brands - Duncan stacked coil versions of classic single coil pickups lack some of the high end shimmer and sprang of vintage style single coils. 

I have exploited this fact to get a neck position sound that is a halfway house between Strat and humbucker - depending on how I set its tone control.

FWIIW, the only DiMarzio Area pickup of which I have experience is the 67. It sounded believably "Stratty" despite being installed in a set neck, all-"mahogany" Ibanez Fireman guitar. The other two pickups were DiMarzio Injector models - same construction as the Area but tweaked for fuller midrange.

Mike58

Cheers guys, I wired to pickup straight to output and all was well, the wiring pots etc were a proper mess and vol pot was knackered.
I’m going to advise my mate to keep the SD BG-1400s and sell on this partscaster as he hates the neck.
thanks for the help and advice, Happy New Year to you both.
mike