# Can 4 Wire Pickups Be Used As Regular 2 Wire, Plus What Can I Do With The Other Two Wires?



## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

I have been looking for a particular 2 wire humbucker set, and one came up but it is 4 wire. 

I would like to put them in either an SG or a Gibson 335 neither have extra pull pots or switches. Just the regular 3 way Gibson switch.

As I asked in the title, can I use these as regular 2 wire pickups?

What extra features/options can I get buy utilizing the extra wires? I assume they can go into a single coil mode?

Thanks


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

Yes it can be done. I won't attempt to tell you which colors are which but you twist the right colors together depending on the brand. Best thing is to check the website of the manufacturer for schematics


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

This is just an example. Figure out what your wire colors are. In this case the white and red are twisted together and put off to the side. they attach to nothing.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

Will they sound or measure any different than the two wire version of the same pickup?

What can I get the extra two wires to do? Anything other than coil splitting?


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## DavidP (Mar 7, 2006)

1) 2 vs. 4 wire leads on the same model shouldn’t sound different; you will likely get some minor difference in resistance measurements but that’s due to coil winding.
2) Lots of options! I like switching between series and parallel. A partial coil tap split sounds better than simple coil split; you could also use a 3-way switch to get each split coil into the circuit.


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## Latole (Aug 11, 2020)

player99 said:


> Will they sound or measure any different than the two wire version of the same pickup?


No, two wires pickups have their other 2 wire connected inside . You can't see them, but it is the same thing as these wires connected outside.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

ALL humbuckers are 4-wire. The only difference is that some manufacturers make all 4 wires available for the end-user and others connect two of them and tuck them away inside the cover.

I doubt it makes a difference on neck pickups, but I was quite surprised to hear a clearly different sound from the two coils in the bridge pickup of my Vantage (I think these are Schaller pickups). I gather that moving a little further away from the bridge makes a difference in what harmonics attain prominence. Once you're far enough away from the bridge, moving a half inch this way or that is likely moot.


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## troyhead (May 23, 2014)

player99 said:


> What extra features/options can I get buy utilizing the extra wires? I assume they can go into a single coil mode?





DavidP said:


> Lots of options! I like switching between series and parallel. A partial coil tap split sounds better than simple coil split; you could also use a 3-way switch to get each split coil into the circuit.


I'm not a fan of simple coil splits. They sound thin, weak, and nothing like a real single coil to me. There is also a significant volume drop when going to the split coil. But as @DavidP mentioned, there are partial coil tap/split sounds that can be pretty interesting. I describe one below that worked for me.

(Also, technically a "coil tap" is where there is a tap somewhere in the middle of a pickup's winds, so you can switch between fewer winds or more winds on the pickup. These are fairly rare. All of the stuff using a 4-wire humbucker is really a "coil split". I've found what I described below elsewhere on the Internet as a "tuned coil tap", but it's really a special coil split.)



troyhead said:


> Something I tried on one of my guitars that I really like is a "tuned coil tap". In a typical coil split, you take out one of the coils by dumping its signal to ground and then you are left with just the other coil. With a tuned coil tap, basically you put a capacitor and/or resistor in the path where you normally send the signal to ground so that only part of the signal goes to ground, but part of it continues on.
> 
> What you get is actually a somewhat darker tone, no volume drop, and it is still partially hum-cancelling. The component values that you pick affect how drastically the tone changes. I wanted something subtle, so I picked a 0.0047 capacitor (not 0.047) and a 470k resistor in parallel. The result is a slight tonal difference, but still noticeable, especially with a clean tone. There is bit less high end, but some of the upper-mids are affected as well. It's hard to describe, but I like it.
> 
> Anyway, if you've got some alligator clips and extra components (or choose to buy some extra ones... they are cheap!), try some experiments to see what you like. No need to start soldering to try out various sounds.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

troyhead said:


> I'm not a fan of simple coil splits. They sound thin, weak, and nothing like a real single coil to me. There is also a significant volume drop when going to the split coil. But as @DavidP mentioned, there are partial coil tap/split sounds that can be pretty interesting. I describe one below that worked for me.
> 
> (Also, technically a "coil tap" is where there is a tap somewhere in the middle of a pickup's winds, so you can switch between fewer winds or more winds on the pickup. These are fairly rare. All of the stuff using a 4-wire humbucker is really a "coil split". I've found what I described below elsewhere on the Internet as a "tuned coil tap", but it's really a special coil split.)


Any idea what the split is with Lollar Imperial High Winds? All it says is 4 wire is available.








Imperial®


Check out the deal on Imperial® at Lollar Pickups




www.lollarguitars.com


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## troyhead (May 23, 2014)

player99 said:


> Any idea what the split is with Lollar Imperial High Winds? All it says is 4 wire is available.


Are you wondering what DC rating would be for just one coil? With humbuckers, the two coils are usually wound about the same (sometimes slightly off on purpose). When split it's usually about half what the humbucker is rated at. But DC ratings aren't always super helpful. If you are comparing apples to apples (same pickup construction, magnets, wire, etc.) it can be helpful to determine what is hotter. But comparing the DC rating of a split humbucker to that of a regular single coil pickup is like comparing apples to oranges, and may not tell you a lot.

Some pickups these days have some of the special coil sauce built right into the pickup. For example, I think Fender's DoubleTap pickups cut the DC resistance by only 1/4 and don't have a lot of the usual failings of standard coil splits. So perhaps they are actually coil taps instead of splits... who knows.


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## arouse (1 mo ago)

I need help 4 pots dpdt pull up asian 1 selector switch 2 transducers 4 wire 1 jack 1 bridge ground wire, that's it, can it be done? series parallel transducer, adjustable bobbin screws single coiled, phase invert transducer pairing, that's seven modalities maybe more counting phase combo transducers modalities


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