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You will find the lower coil is very weak on its own. I fitted a single-pickup guitar with one and a three-way switch once, and the lower coil was usable, but only for a deliberately 'strangled' "telephone tone" type sound.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The default coil connection for Gibson P100 pickups is parallel, in phase. Older ones had single conductor + braid output cable. Thus, getting the series/single/parallel options permitted by four-con + shield cable required soldering iron surgery.
If you already have four-con + shield output cable, it would be worth experimenting with the three basic coil permutations to audition their tones.
In parallel mode, to achieve the apparently normal nominal DC resistance figure of a single coil P90, the individual coils of a P100 have to be approximately double the output of the traditional single coil. Thus, the individual coils are colossally overwound and, in my opinion, sound terrible. The Duncan STKP-1 stacked coil Soapbar pickups are little better.
I used to think that it would be interesting to partially split the lower coil of a P100 through a trim pot. I imagined that it might be possible to find a sweet spot compromise between noise-cancellation and proper P90 tones. I was wrong.
I suggest that you PM some of the pickup builders who frequent this forum. They may be able to provide helpful tips for how to improve the versatility of P100s. This may involve butane.
@Alegree - a bit like blending circuit I used once. In that instance (on an s-type) you could gradually mix in the middle pup. I thought it would be cool if you could have the same feature in one pickup. Would be keen to hear peoples expert thoughts...
e.g. In parallel mode, a neck position P-100 arrives at the nominal DCR of 7k by pairing two coils of 15k each. (Figures have been rounded for ease of arithmetic.) In this condition, blending in the lower coil decreases the nominal output.
IMHO, this is their only redeeming feature. I am yet to hear any noise-cancelling replacement pickup for P90 that reproduces the juicy goodness of the original single coil idea.
The significance of this depends upon how fixated you are on the tone from pukka single coil P90.
I’m not - but a pickup can still sound bad without sounding like a specific classic one .
I have actually discovered that some of my favourite pickups are mini and stacked humbuckers, but they seem to be almost easier to get wrong than right. There are so many bad ones - most seem to fail because they’re trying to copy the sound of an existing single coil or full-size humbucker.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I dare say that the pickup builders on this forum could provide full-on technical explanations of the coil permutations, what they sound like and why. Unfortunately, this would take up valuable time and please nobody.
Agreed. Some of my favourite guitar sounds have come from instruments that are, frankly, utter shite. Their pickups are atrocious, both as designs on paper and in real world applications. Nevertheless, those bad pickups can produce interesting - if experimental - results.
Speaking of experimental, with four-con + shield output cable, it is possible to run the coils of a P100 in reverse phase to each other. The difference in output produced by each coil would create a partial frequency cancellation effect. This could prove interesting. Equally, it could be unusable.
The coils are out of phase as stock - that’s how stacked humbuckers cancel the hum. They rely on the lower coil being fairly well isolated from the string signal - by distance and often a metal plate in between the coils - in order not to cancel too much of the signal from the upper coil as well. (Which is why the lower coil by itself sounds weak and ‘distant’.)
You can put the lower coil *in* phase if you want - that produces a stronger output but no hum cancellation... Duncan describes this as ‘power boost’ switching if I remember rightly.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein