How do you split a Seymour Duncan JB Jr. with a push-push pot in a jaguar?

[MaartenAars]

I got a Squier Jaguar about 1,5 years ago when I started playing electric guitar. I didn't know alot about guitar specs, so I just bought one that I thought looked the prettiest. The problem is, I mainly play grunge and metal, so the single coils aren't the greatest fit for me. Thats why i'm thinking about upgrading my bridge pickup to a Seymour Duncan JB Jr.

You could argue that the price of that pickup is half the price of the guitar itself and that I should maybe just buy another guitar. But that guitar was a gift from my mom and I don't want it collecting dust. Also just because I'm in love with the shape of the guitar and I want to know how the electronics of a guitar work.

I'd like to hook up the humbucker to a push-push pot. I already have a base of knowledge about electronics, but I think I'm going to need help if I want to do this. If anyone knows how I should pull this off please let me know

[JSutter]

There are 2 wires that come soldered together and insulated (heat shrink). All you have to do is remove the insulation and connect those wires to ground through your switch. That grounds one coil and completes the circuit for the other coil making it a single coil.

[B.T.]

I got a Squier Jaguar about 1,5 years ago when I started playing electric guitar. I didn't know alot about guitar specs, so I just bought one that I thought looked the prettiest. The problem is, I mainly play grunge and metal, so the single coils aren't the greatest fit for me. Thats why i'm thinking about upgrading my bridge pickup to a Seymour Duncan JB Jr.

You could argue that the price of that pickup is half the price of the guitar itself and that I should maybe just buy another guitar. But that guitar was a gift from my mom and I don't want it collecting dust. Also just because I'm in love with the shape of the guitar and I want to know how the electronics of a guitar work.

I'd like to hook up the humbucker to a push-push pot. I already have a base of knowledge about electronics, but I think I'm going to need help if I want to do this. If anyone knows how I should pull this off please let me know

That’s a great reason to keep a guitar around . Tapping humbuckers to get single coil response is a road I’ve been down before and honestly it doesn’t provide what you might expect. After all these years probably the most useful humbucker mod is the reverse phase. Tapping humbuckers for single coil action gets you a pretty anemic sounding pickup and not in a low impedance lipstick pickup sorta way.

They make P90 types with a side car coil to provide hum canceling. That would be a better road to go down imho. But if you’re dead set on taking a PAF type HB and splitting it check out the PRS mod. It dials in a little bit of the secondary coil to provide a thicker sound but still retaining a single coil response.

[alexpigment]

While coil split can be a nice option, it’s worth considering a series/parallel switch for the humbucker instead. You will get a relatively similar sound to a single coil when in parallel mode (brighter, less output, cleaner, etc), but you’ll still have hum cancellation. If you google Seymour Duncan JB series / parallel switch, you should be able to find a diagram that shows which colored wires go where. Hopefully that helps.

[MaartenAars]

While coil split can be a nice option, it’s worth considering a series/parallel switch for the humbucker instead. You will get a relatively similar sound to a single coil when in parallel mode (brighter, less output, cleaner, etc), but you’ll still have hum cancellation. If you google Seymour Duncan JB series / parallel switch, you should be able to find a diagram that shows which colored wires go where. Hopefully that helps.

Allright, I'll look into it!
Would you say it would sound better to put it parallel instead of splitting it? Or do you suggest putting it parallel just for the hum cancelation?
Just trying to know a bit more about this kind of stuff

[alexpigment]

That will depend entirely on how the pickup is constructed. Some pickups are designed specifically to sound good split; others are a bit of a compromise when split. Since the JB Jr is made with very narrow coils, it's going to sound a bit different than a traditional single coil. I would think that you'll get a bit more output with parallel, and again, you'll still get hum cancellation. If you have the pickup and you have the switch, it's worth trying both wirings to see which one you like better. It's worth noting that you'll probably want to turn the tone knob down in either mode (split or parallel) since it'll be considerably brighter than the standard humbucker mode.

[gibs]

Not many humbuckers split well, definitely agree that they are anemic, and not as good sounding as tele or strat singlecoil. There are some that are designed to split well, supposedly the prs 58/15 lt pickups are, but there $500, yikes. I have a set of Lollar eldorados and they split well with zero output loss (I have no idea how they pulled that off) and sound phenomenal when split, I find myself running it split way more than I did with other pickups where they were anemic, but are still pretty pricy, only reason I got them is because I got a good deal on them. The guy from Dylan pickups supposedly can wind pickups up where they do split well and sound good in that configuration. I would say that most pickups your better off going series parallel, it’s singlecoil like, but better sounding than coil splitting with most humbuckers.

[B.T.]

Check out the PRS split mod below and also look into which coil you want to be dominant aka slug vs screw pole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desk ... VaJlL-MmNo

[Futuron]

Certain humbuckers are made with one coil overwound and an extra hot wire for it. When you hook up your split switch, in addition to toggling the bypassing of one coil, the other coil has to select between its 2 hot wires - the 'overwound' is for split mode, the 'tap' is for humbucker. This allows the split mode to not be such a drastic volume drop.

Quite a few of the current modern Fenders use this. Player Plus, Performer & Professional II do at least, Ultra might do, I don't remember.

I would think that you'll get a bit more output with parallel, and again, you'll still get hum cancellation.

2 resistors in parallel give a total resistance that is half the resistance of 1 resistor by itself. 2 resistors in series give a total that is twice that of a single resistor. Humbuckers in parallel are quieter than in split, which are in turn quieter than in series.

[alexpigment]

2 resistors in parallel give a total resistance that is half the resistance of 1 resistor by itself. 2 resistors in series give a total that is twice that of a single resistor. Humbuckers in parallel are quieter than in split, which are in turn quieter than in series.

The resistance is as you said, but the volume is not. This has been discussed and measured many times on the internet, and people will argue their respective positions, but the split + parallel debate continues to rage on Here's an interesting post from the gear page that I read a while back when looking into split vs parallel myself:

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... r.1227626/

There's a graph in there where split vs parallel was measured in a frequency graph. Now, I probably should have accentuated the words "a bit" in my previous post, and I think that there's a certain amount of perceptual volume vs actual volume to take into consideration due to the frequencies of each approach, but ultimately the volume differences are pointless if all you're comparing it to is the series mode (which will be louder). The bottom line is that parallel tends to achieve the desired result - a brighter single-coil like sound - with hum cancellation to boot. It will *not* be half the volume of a split humbucker (i.e. the parallel mode will not be half the volume of one coil of the humbucker).