GUITARS WITH COIL TAPPED PICKUPS

COIL-TAPPING: A humbucker pickup has two coils that are placed side-by-side. This pickup arrangement has its own characteristic sound that is popular with most guitar players. Single-coils are also popular with most guitar players, because they have a different, brighter tone. You can covert many humbucker pickups to a decent-sounding single-coil pickup by simply disconnecting or shorting out one coil of the pair. This is known as "coil tapping" the humbucker pickup. If you want to know more about pickups, click on this for some interesting facts. Pickups, humbuckers/single-coils, and coil-tapping

If you coil-tap one coil each of a pair of humbuckers, you can get a nice "quack" sound like you get on an "in-between" position on a Stratocaster. You can coil-tap two pickups using one pole of a DPDT (double-pole/double-throw) switch, toggle or push-pull. If you choose which coils that you tap, you can end up with the combination being hum-cancelling. Tapping one coil as opposed to the other coil of the pair will produce a slightly different tone due to its location on the string. You can re-connect the pickup to as to make the desired coil combination be both hum-cancelling and also under the desired string position. Some guitars have switching that "coil-taps" one or more humbucker pickups. Another pickup selection scheme for 2-humbucker guitars is the 5-position lever switch. Positions 1 and 5 select neck and bridge pickups respectively. Then, the 3 middle positions provide various combinations while "coil-tapping" both the bridge and middle pickups.