In the first part we looked at mods we can perform to an individual pickup. In part two we'll talk about ways of wiring two or more pickups together.
Note: all of the these can be performed with single coils, humbuckers or the mods presented in part one.
Parallel - Most guitars come wired this way, just like the middle position on a Les Paul, or position 2 and 4 on a Strat. The two coils on the separate single coil pickups are wired together (if they are reverse wound/reverse polarity they will also cancel hum) but instead of adding the output of the two coils they cut the output. Let's look at your typical vintage style strat pickup, output wise they are usually in the 5k ohms when we wire two of them in parallel the resulting output is 2,5k ohms. The resulting tone is the beloved strat quack, a very clean, glassy tone.
Series - The opposite of the parallel wiring and not just electronically. Instead of a clean, trebly sound, wiring two pickups in series gives you a heavy, dense tone, much closer to a higher output humbucker, but more balanced. I especially like this mod on Jazz Basses, since it gives the hability to have something completly different to the stock sounds.
Brian May Red Specials pickups are wired in series, with switches for out of phase options.
In Phase - Remember how your typical guitar is wired in parallel in the middle positions? Well it's also wired in phase. Without going to much into the science behind it this means that the sound you hear is the summation of the two pickups.
Out of Phase - The opposite of the in phase explanation. The coils are "fighting" eachother and canceling equal frequencies, what you hear is the frequencies that don't get cancelled out.
This results in a weak and with very little bass, nasaly sound.
Probably the most well known user of the out of phase tone was Peter Green. You can wire any two pickups out of phase, altough I find it works best with humbucker and combination of neck and bridge pickups. To avoid a large volume drop you can wire the pickups in series and out of phase.
All theses mods can be made to be actived with a toggle switch or a push pull pot and can add a lot of versatility in your guitar, including some very uncommon tones.
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