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I am very fond of the Seymour Duncan TB-16 '59/Custom hybrid. In brief, '59 screw coil and Custom stud coil. Splitting to the latter makes for a more convincing "in between" sound when combined with the middle pickup.
Oil City Pickups' The Creature may be constructed along similar principles.
It could be done with the pickup itself - you would need one tapped coil and one standard. The tapped coil would probably need thinner gauge wire, so it might not sound *exactly* like either a single coil or a normal PAF-type, but it might be close enough.
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For full disclosure, I have a TB-16 in the bridge position of my Fender American Performer Stratocaster. The centre pickup is a certain SSL-2 previously owned by ICBM.
SSL-2 + 8k stud coil = slightly aggressive "in between" sound, suitable for Rock.
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Ben.
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You then get pickups like the Creature or BKP VHII where the coil offset is really exaggerated so the splits are still strong on one coil.
But as usual, ICBM's hit it on the head - what @stickyfiddle is describing is a partial split, where not all of the "off" coil is going to ground and so the split has more body and less of a volume drop while not sounding all that different. I've got it in a couple of my guitars and it works brilliantly. It won't fool anyone on a recording but it more than does the job in a live setting.
Not all of them do.
Duncan JB, Suhr SSV+ have been goo options for me in the past.
Or use 500k pots and a resistor for the single coils so that it behaves like a 250k pot.
I am personally wary of putting anything too hot in a HSS.
My Anderson Classic has a Suhr SSV+ with 2x ML single coils and they are well balanced.
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Football is rubbish.
It is not too hot for the singles but still has the grunt I need when I need it.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Football is rubbish.
Creature is regular humbucker coils but of two wildly different resistances and, quite possibly, different copper wire gauges.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
SSV and V60LPs worked well for me in a strat. I went the 500k plus resistor for the singles route.
It's hard to adequately describe how much better partial split is than full split. PRS use 1.1k on the neck and 2.2k on the bridge. I've experimented with different values but those seem spot on to me. Genuine great sounds, no compromise
With regards to the position 2 full humbucker plus single coil tone it’s thicker and less quacky than a typical strat position 2. I find a full autosplit with a PAF type can get a bit brighter and thinner, but the advantage is it can be noise cancelling (there is some hum adding a single coil and a humbucker together).
As far as compromises go, that’s been my preference for a guitar that balances to my taste across each selection.
With hotter humbuckers I’ve gone for full auto splits, which do work well for the in between positions. However using single coils on their own sound drastically different to the humbuckers in that case, which I find less useful
Partial splits have already been covered and can be very effective.
There are various other options if you are purchasing a new pickup, e.g. a tapped (as opposed to solely split) humbucker:
There are a couple of ways these can be implemented. Firstly a pickup where extra windings are added to the primary coil when the secondary coil is earthed (an example is the Fender double tap humbucker).
An alternative is an asymmetric split where the coil junction isn't used to split the coil, but a tap in the second coil is used , such that the secondary coil is actually contributing some turns when split, and of course these extra windings are actually on the secondary coil rather than being extra windings on the primary coil. This second approach retains some hum cancelling, and is how some Gemini pickups implement their coil split.
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/89942/caspercaster#latest
Obviously it's not identical to a PAF in humbucker mode, though. But it sounds pretty humbuckery, and get very good split tones.