Coil split vs coil tap is actually not that complicated (and it kinda surprises me how many people seem to always confuse the two, the hint is in the name). The vast majority of time people talk about either of those, they mean coil split - taking a humbucker and "separating" (splitting) the coils apart so they can only use one of them, effectively making a single coil pickup. From the way the coils are made, it basically only means the pickup offers the option to wire each of the two coils in its entirety independently. Coil tap is in a way a bit more complicated. It refers to only one of the coils, which is wound in a way that the winding of the coil is "tapped" at some point to make a "branch off" to basically allow you to either use the full length of the coil as you would normally do, or leave part of the winding unused - which would result in a weaker output with a different sound characteristics, exactly how a "less hot" pickup would sound. So coil tap is usually used with hotter pickups to make a less hot sound available on the same guitar, for example to make a modern guitar with hi-gain pickups sound more like a vintage one. And it has also be said coil tap tends to be fairly rare, unlike coil split, precisely because coil tap requires the pickup to be wound in a different way from the beginning, whereas coil split just means wiring a regular wound humbucker differently. (And I apologize, this probably isn't the right place to explain this, but I just couldn't help myself.)
Coil splitting is a special case of coil tapping: it means tapping in the middle of a set of two coils. It is also a barbarism in that no coil is split. The whole pick-up is split in that only one of its coils is used. Tapping the signal somewhere within a coil, on the other hand, is really splitting acoil. Still we always get one who's trying to explain some higher wisdom and only ends up showing he doesn't understand his own language.
@@Leo_ofRedKeep Well I hope you feel all better now that you've told us how you really feel about semantics that really add nothing to what was discussed except pointless technicalities that didn't need to be addressed for the sake of simplicity (though the suggestion that coil splitting is a form of coil tapping assumes things I would not consider being correct, like for example considering both coils of a humbucker being one single coil in order for it to be tapped by doing a coil split, despite the fact that there are quite literally two physical coils in a humbucker), and of course also about how appalling it is I clearly don't understand my own language. Which, BTW, isn't English, not that I think it matters in the slightest. But you clearly feel very strongly about all of this and have very strong opinions on it, so again, hope you feel better now. Have a nice day as well, pleasure having such a constructive conversation with you.
@@Leo_ofRedKeep As far as SOUND goes, the effect of splitting a humbucker usually gives you a more single coil sound while also losing a bit of the hum-bucking characteristics of the pickup. Tapping a coil is usually done on a single coil pickup and makes a hotter pickup sound closer to a lower wound version of itself. Instead of confusing the issue while talking down to someone else, try a little humility. I'm sorry for stepping out as well, but sonics matter more to other guitarists rather than talking points of electronic theory.
@@cchavez248 I know the physics of it. My point is about correcting the misleading language used about them. It takes a guitar player to explain to others how "coil splitting" is something that does not split a coil without even realising the nonsense of it.
I couldn't agree more .... I 've got Kloppmann pickups in my famous PRS guitar..... Improvement? May be just a little bit less compression and a little more sparkle in the top end, but you know you have the best stuff available in your Nö. 1 guitar. The same is with high grade preamp tubes in your Nö. 1 amplifier 😊 Pimp your axe and have fun, thats all about.....
Love pickup videos! Absolut love dimarzio because I'm basic and they get me close to the tone in my head. These Kloppmann's are ace! Might have to install them in my "mod project" guitar 🤔
When I did put new batteries in my hearing aids, the guitar sounded so much better. I could even hear a bird singing in the background. Might also be my tinnitus, though.
Great video and very honest conclusions. Thank you. Something you might want to try would be to lower the pickups a little then raise the pole pieces on the adjustable coil. This should help brighten the sound a little for humbucking mode but might not be as good when coil split. Playing with pot values can also help but my (little) experience with it is that along with extra brightness comes extra harshness too...
The new ones are fuller - less spiky. Middle sounds way less poinky and clicky. Sound waaay better with distortion - there was a weird midrange spike before. The increased bass response really does it for me. To me it went from sounding like you’re trying to emulate a good rock tone to actually pulling it off.
Henning which capacitors are they using for tone? This will have a huge influence on the sounds ie brighter, darker and how much usable influence you have on the sound. I believe if you ask your guitar tech he can help this. Dose the guitar now inspire you to play it more? This is the only true answer as to whether it was worth modifying this guitar!! Your opinion is the only one that matters! Always luv your videos...
Good video. I really like your honesty. I agree with you 100% so this is why I personaly like seymour duncan and dimarzio. Because on there web the list a eq for all pickups so if I hear that my guiter needs more high or low i pick pickups based on what that guitar need more or less. But I can't say what is my faverout pickup. I can only say what is my faverout pickup in one of my guitars
I cut down trees, I wear high heels Suspenders and a bra I wish I were a girlie Just like my dear papa! Btw, I thought I actually noticed a difference with the full gain humbucker sound, it was like you increased the volume a tiny little bit and it had more 'punch', if that's the right word.
"'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!"
Editted to the front: But Henning, I DO love the sound of a '59 style neck pickup. :) I have several from several different pickup builders and it's just the style of pickup that I enjoy in that position (of course with variables for style and what the purpose of the guitar is). I have the Dimarzio Anniversary set in a '75 Ibanez Lawsuit "authentic" ;) and I purposely swapped the SD Jazz for the SD 59 in the neck of my mayones cause while the jazz is great, it's just got this frequency range that is amazing (to me) with high gain stuff, but not as good with just a mild overdrive which is where I usually live. dude the way that shot was angled first I thought he was wearing one of those asian hats, but it was the lamp 🤣🤣🤣7:13 , I'm listening to you while working so I didn't see him bent over before. For the new ones, the split neck pickup might drive too much for my taste. If I want that much push on a clean signal I'll kick in the OD and roll back volume.
I have a "better" HH Tele for my Band with a JB in the Bridge, I bought myself a cheaper HH Tele to leave at the rehearsal space, into wich I also put a JB in the Bridge. And I was astonished how much they both just sound like compety different Guitars! (Specs not too different) Which they are, but until then I thought that PUs had much more of an influence. I guess they are just a kind of mic after all xD
@@PooNinja Depends on the people you're with, around Top Gear fans it's fine but I wouldn't use it when at a Greenpeace meeting or something like that ; )
@@DerEchteBold it’s non gmo, non toxic and absorbs CO2... so maybe don’t leave it to close to your plants. No Animal testing. Guitarist don’t count right?
Hi Henning, great video, as always. I actually wanted to ask you about tuners, seeing as you mentioned them. So, Schallers. Back in the day they were THE tuners to choose for replacements. If you wanted new tuners, you bought Schallers. Nothing else was worth the effort. I have a couple of sets on my older guitars and they still (40+ years on) impress me as the best. I don't have any that are newer though, and recently I've been seeing that quite a few RUclipsrs have been "less than kind" towards them. What happened? Have they really gone that far downhill? As for the Pickups, well.... "meh". They're nice, sound good etc, but not €400+ good. I went to look at the website and found one set of Pickups for nearly €600 - the same set for nearly €840 because it includes two "bumble bee" caps. While I know they have some parts custom made, that's taking the piss- big time.
Schaller dropped the ball and their stuff comes with a lot of play in the tuning action... not always, which means their production is good one day and bad the next. HipShot, Graphtech... threats where I‘d go today.
WTF? Buy a guitar with good wood and and make sure the neck is fitted accurately all else can be fixed. Swap out the PU's for Duncan's or something with a reliable track record. Take the guitar to a good tech or even get a Plek job done on the guitar. For under $1000.00 you should have a killer . Every dollar more you spend is buying prestige. fret board
Coil split vs coil tap is actually not that complicated (and it kinda surprises me how many people seem to always confuse the two, the hint is in the name). The vast majority of time people talk about either of those, they mean coil split - taking a humbucker and "separating" (splitting) the coils apart so they can only use one of them, effectively making a single coil pickup. From the way the coils are made, it basically only means the pickup offers the option to wire each of the two coils in its entirety independently.
Coil tap is in a way a bit more complicated. It refers to only one of the coils, which is wound in a way that the winding of the coil is "tapped" at some point to make a "branch off" to basically allow you to either use the full length of the coil as you would normally do, or leave part of the winding unused - which would result in a weaker output with a different sound characteristics, exactly how a "less hot" pickup would sound. So coil tap is usually used with hotter pickups to make a less hot sound available on the same guitar, for example to make a modern guitar with hi-gain pickups sound more like a vintage one.
And it has also be said coil tap tends to be fairly rare, unlike coil split, precisely because coil tap requires the pickup to be wound in a different way from the beginning, whereas coil split just means wiring a regular wound humbucker differently.
(And I apologize, this probably isn't the right place to explain this, but I just couldn't help myself.)
Coil splitting is a special case of coil tapping: it means tapping in the middle of a set of two coils. It is also a barbarism in that no coil is split. The whole pick-up is split in that only one of its coils is used. Tapping the signal somewhere within a coil, on the other hand, is really splitting acoil.
Still we always get one who's trying to explain some higher wisdom and only ends up showing he doesn't understand his own language.
@@Leo_ofRedKeep Well I hope you feel all better now that you've told us how you really feel about semantics that really add nothing to what was discussed except pointless technicalities that didn't need to be addressed for the sake of simplicity (though the suggestion that coil splitting is a form of coil tapping assumes things I would not consider being correct, like for example considering both coils of a humbucker being one single coil in order for it to be tapped by doing a coil split, despite the fact that there are quite literally two physical coils in a humbucker), and of course also about how appalling it is I clearly don't understand my own language. Which, BTW, isn't English, not that I think it matters in the slightest.
But you clearly feel very strongly about all of this and have very strong opinions on it, so again, hope you feel better now. Have a nice day as well, pleasure having such a constructive conversation with you.
@@Leo_ofRedKeep As far as SOUND goes, the effect of splitting a humbucker usually gives you a more single coil sound while also losing a bit of the hum-bucking characteristics of the pickup. Tapping a coil is usually done on a single coil pickup and makes a hotter pickup sound closer to a lower wound version of itself. Instead of confusing the issue while talking down to someone else, try a little humility. I'm sorry for stepping out as well, but sonics matter more to other guitarists rather than talking points of electronic theory.
@@cchavez248 I know the physics of it. My point is about correcting the misleading language used about them. It takes a guitar player to explain to others how "coil splitting" is something that does not split a coil without even realising the nonsense of it.
I couldn't agree more .... I 've got Kloppmann pickups in my famous PRS guitar..... Improvement? May be just a little bit less compression and a little more sparkle in the top end, but you know you have the best stuff available in your Nö. 1 guitar. The same is with high grade preamp tubes in your Nö. 1 amplifier 😊 Pimp your axe and have fun, thats all about.....
Love pickup videos!
Absolut love dimarzio because I'm basic and they get me close to the tone in my head. These Kloppmann's are ace! Might have to install them in my "mod project" guitar 🤔
When I did put new batteries in my hearing aids, the guitar sounded so much better. I could even hear a bird singing in the background. Might also be my tinnitus, though.
Absolutely agree with you no change whatsoever in humbucker mode. thank you for a great video
Great video and very honest conclusions. Thank you. Something you might want to try would be to lower the pickups a little then raise the pole pieces on the adjustable coil. This should help brighten the sound a little for humbucking mode but might not be as good when coil split. Playing with pot values can also help but my (little) experience with it is that along with extra brightness comes extra harshness too...
Change to 500k pots if they are not already in there.. maybe?
The new ones are fuller - less spiky. Middle sounds way less poinky and clicky.
Sound waaay better with distortion - there was a weird midrange spike before. The increased bass response really does it for me. To me it went from sounding like you’re trying to emulate a good rock tone to actually pulling it off.
Henning which capacitors are they using for tone? This will have a huge influence on the sounds ie brighter, darker and how much usable influence you have on the sound. I believe if you ask your guitar tech he can help this. Dose the guitar now inspire you to play it more? This is the only true answer as to whether it was worth modifying this guitar!! Your opinion is the only one that matters! Always luv your videos...
YES, both guitars now feel like better guitars to me!
Top common sense, truthful review, can't ask for more. Respect and stay healthy all
Good video. I really like your honesty. I agree with you 100% so this is why I personaly like seymour duncan and dimarzio. Because on there web the list a eq for all pickups so if I hear that my guiter needs more high or low i pick pickups based on what that guitar need more or less. But I can't say what is my faverout pickup. I can only say what is my faverout pickup in one of my guitars
Darn, all the good points I wanted to say have been mentioned. Nice pickups!
I cut down trees, I wear high heels
Suspenders and a bra
I wish I were a girlie
Just like my dear papa!
Btw, I thought I actually noticed a difference with the full gain humbucker sound, it was like you increased the volume a tiny little bit and it had more 'punch', if that's the right word.
"'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!"
One of Pythons finest. Jozsi is a top man.
Editted to the front: But Henning, I DO love the sound of a '59 style neck pickup. :) I have several from several different pickup builders and it's just the style of pickup that I enjoy in that position (of course with variables for style and what the purpose of the guitar is). I have the Dimarzio Anniversary set in a '75 Ibanez Lawsuit "authentic" ;) and I purposely swapped the SD Jazz for the SD 59 in the neck of my mayones cause while the jazz is great, it's just got this frequency range that is amazing (to me) with high gain stuff, but not as good with just a mild overdrive which is where I usually live.
dude the way that shot was angled first I thought he was wearing one of those asian hats, but it was the lamp 🤣🤣🤣7:13 , I'm listening to you while working so I didn't see him bent over before. For the new ones, the split neck pickup might drive too much for my taste. If I want that much push on a clean signal I'll kick in the OD and roll back volume.
I think I may have A.D.D., I forgot to listen to the demo of the old pickups because I was too busy watching your lights change colors!
Do you think the type of wood effected the tone in the pup change? I would have liked to hear some Bare Knuckle's in the guitar, just a thought.
I have a "better" HH Tele for my Band with a JB in the Bridge, I bought myself a cheaper HH Tele to leave at the rehearsal space, into wich I also put a JB in the Bridge. And I was astonished how much they both just sound like compety different Guitars! (Specs not too different) Which they are, but until then I thought that PUs had much more of an influence. I guess they are just a kind of mic after all xD
8:56 🤘🏽
Tone paint
I wanna see Henning wire-up a guitar 'cause I need to learn a lot of German curse words.
I heard Mike Tyson say Fahrvergnugen once. I’m not exactly sure what it meant but I don’t think it something one should say in public?
@@PooNinja
Depends on the people you're with, around Top Gear fans it's fine but I wouldn't use it when at a Greenpeace meeting or something like that ; )
@@DerEchteBold it’s non gmo, non toxic and absorbs CO2... so maybe don’t leave it to close to your plants.
No Animal testing.
Guitarist don’t count right?
1:00 I got (and enjoyed) your Monty Python reference :)
Hi Henning, great video, as always. I actually wanted to ask you about tuners, seeing as you mentioned them.
So, Schallers. Back in the day they were THE tuners to choose for replacements. If you wanted new tuners, you bought Schallers. Nothing else was worth the effort. I have a couple of sets on my older guitars and they still (40+ years on) impress me as the best. I don't have any that are newer though, and recently I've been seeing that quite a few RUclipsrs have been "less than kind" towards them. What happened? Have they really gone that far downhill?
As for the Pickups, well.... "meh". They're nice, sound good etc, but not €400+ good. I went to look at the website and found one set of Pickups for nearly €600 - the same set for nearly €840 because it includes two "bumble bee" caps. While I know they have some parts custom made, that's taking the piss- big time.
Schaller dropped the ball and their stuff comes with a lot of play in the tuning action... not always, which means their production is good one day and bad the next.
HipShot, Graphtech... threats where I‘d go today.
That's one big puppy dog!
Agree it make sense 🙏🏾👍🏾💪🏾👍🏾
It was oddly calming to watch the build part of the video...
I guess your mate Joshi is what one might call a "pick up artist"
Lumberjacks not withstanding, thank you for this research.
What was wrong with the old ABM bridge?
it was more of a junior style
You make me laugh all the time. Lol.
WTF?
Buy a guitar with good wood and and make sure the neck is fitted accurately all else can be fixed. Swap out the PU's for Duncan's or something with a reliable track record. Take the guitar to a good tech or even get a Plek job done on the guitar. For under $1000.00 you should have a killer . Every dollar more you spend is buying prestige.
fret board
And the lampshade is still dusty.
Jozsi can't see it from his angle :)
If you enjoy playing it, it's better.
the before .... sounds better.....🙈 sorry............