It’s a little “link bait,” I know, I know. But I’ve owned and played many budget guitars over the years and have never come across one that sounded good in the split/tap position. So what’s the difference, and why doesn’t either sound good on budget guitars? I set out to find out.
Coil Split
A humbucker is two single coil pickups of opposite polarity, wired together. This gets rid of the hum, makes for a louder, thicker sound, and eliminates some of the high end. And of course a single coil pickup is, well, one single coil. It has (generally) less output and more high end (treble.) Fender (and other) amps often have a “Bright” switch on them, which when applied to a humbucker boosts the high end enough to make it sound less dull than a single coil.
Players seek Telecasters and Stratocasters because of their distinctive single coil sounds. So why not take a humbucker and just “turn off” one of the coils? That’ll be a single coil pickup and will sound just like the one in a Strat. Except it doesn’t. It sounds thin, reedy, and wimpy, in every case I’ve heard on budget guitars. Even on expensive PRS guitars where they do all kinds of tricks to make the coil split sound better, to my ears it just doesn’t cut it. But why? Before we talk about that, let’s dispense with the…
Coil Tap
This is most commonly a technique used on single coil pickups. A single coil pickup is a magnet with one single piece of wired wrapped around it several thousand times. The more you wind it the louder it gets, but at the cost of some high end. So a “hot” single coil pickup will often be chosen for how well it can overdrive an amp, whereas a single coil with fewer winds will give a more vintage bell-like tone. There are other factors – I’m generalizing. Instead of a single piece of wire, what if you split the wire in the middle? Then you’ve got the ability to tap into just half of the wire, or to connect them for the full effect. A neat idea, but it doesn’t work as well as just using different pickups. But why?
Why
Both coil splits and coil taps have a disadvantage – they both rely on using half the wire that is there. But the rest of the unused wire IS still there, and it does have an impact on the magnetic field and thus the sound. But in the case of the coil split, there’s a bigger reason. If you take a humbucker and remove one of the coils, even if you physically remove it, you’re going to end up with a single coil, but it wasn’t designed to make sound on its own. In order to have nicer high end, each coil in a humbucker might be made a little brighter than a normal single coil, to compensate for the high end loss that results from wiring two single coils together. And if the manufacturer wants a more even sound, each coil might be a little thin in the midrange. Combined, they have a nice sound. Individually, they’re awful.
Coil tapping can be done on a humbucker. But the result is a weaker humbucker, not a single coil. It can sound more “like” a single coil because you can gain some high end, but you can also do that with the bright switch on your amp. 🙂
Cheater!
Some high end guitar makers like PRS do interesting things to compensate for these problems, such as using a dummy coil hidden inside the guitar. But no matter what tricks are used, a PRS Custom 24 will not sound like a Strat. But if you’ve got several thousand dollars to spend on a PRS, you can just buy a Strat and that WILL sound like a Strat.
So Why Bother?
The answer is simple – marketing and lack of knowledge on the part of the consumer. I have coil taps on my PRS SE Custom 24. The stock pickups in that guitar are mediocre to begin with. I replaced the bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan Golden Pearly Gates, a humbucker designed to sound great in a Les Paul. Most Seymour Duncan humbuckers come with 4 wires, so I wired it up to be able to do coil splitting. And yuck. You can split the coils and the sound will get thinner and you will get some high end, and if you were in a cover band and only wanted to play one guitar you could sort of get away with it. But it will not sound good.
Here’s a revolutionary idea, then… why not just take two Strat pickups and wire them together? That way when you coil split you’ve got an actual Strat pickup. Nope. When you coil split it’ll sound good. But those pickups weren’t meant to be combined. When you do, you end up with a lot of mud and lack of definition. It’s the same problem as coil splitting but in reverse. They weren’t meant to be combined right next to each other.
Summary
The idea of getting Strat sounds out of your Les Paul is appealing, but coil splitting and coil capping are not going to accomplish that. Can you get a usable tone by coil splitting? Yes. But do you want a usable tone, or a great tone? Drop $299 on a used MIM Strat. It’ll sound more like a Strat than any coil splitting can. Heck, for that matter, so will a used $99 Squire Affinity Strat.
