• Ernie Ball
  • MusicMan
  • Sterling by MusicMan

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Joined
Nov 13, 2003
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2
Location
UK
I'd like to put a coil tap on my Axis using a pull push pot. Does anyone have a schematic? Is it possible with Axis pickups? Any input greatly appreciated.
 

Dodgeball

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Sep 20, 2004
Messages
232
Location
England
AFAIK it's possible, I'm even considering doing the same thing myself.

I believe (but haven't had time to check) that axis pickups are four conductor, allowing for splitting/phasing/whatever so replacing the volume pot with a DPDT and then following any of the million schematics available for this on the net will be pretty simple.

The Seymour Duncan site has good clear schematics and Guitarnuts has oodles of 'em. :D

Remember that the wiring colours will be for DiMarzios tho! :rolleyes:

Cliff
 

Daggo

Active member
Joined
Feb 3, 2003
Messages
25
I purchased a push-pull pot a few months ago, but haven't had the guts to install it, yet. The wiring is so neat and perfect on the axis that I am afraid of screwing it up.

However, I have checked out a bunch of diagrams and you can split, change series/parallel configurations or phase on these pickups. The colour coding is indeed Dimarzio based.

The one thing that I can't figure out is how to make a noise cancelling combination of the two pickups when they are both coil tapped. From the reading I've done, you need to combine a slug coil with a screw coil to get a hum cancelling configuration. On the axis, this would be the white coil of the bridge pickup and the black coil of the neck pickup or the black coil of the bridge pickup with the white coil of the neck pickup. There doesn't seem to be anyway of getting the two most desired combinations (both inside coils for a strat like sound or both outside coils for a tele sound) that is hum cancelling.

Am I missing something?

Daggo
 

Insane Eddie

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Aug 11, 2004
Messages
25
Location
Edmonton, Canada
Has anyone done this mod? What did you think of the results? I found with a certain, *ahem* wannbe EBMM type guitar, the results were pretty poor. The pickup sounds with the pot pulled out, didn't sound much different. Would you expect this on the Axis? Are the sounds you get going to be worth it? I guess you can't expect them to sound like singel coils...
 

Dodgeball

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Sep 20, 2004
Messages
232
Location
England
Well it's gonna depend on the pickups of course but I would have thought that the results would be very worthwhile.

I had a DPDT on the volume control of my old ibanez with dimarzio pickups (Air Zone/Air Classic) and the results were excellent. The combined split tones from both - middle pos of 3-way selector- was worth the mod in itself but the other split positions were perfectly usable too.

C
 

Warg Master

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Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,392
Location
SLC
Daggo said:
I purchased a push-pull pot a few months ago, but haven't had the guts to install it, yet. The wiring is so neat and perfect on the axis that I am afraid of screwing it up.


That's why I will prolly never touch the electronics on my EBMMs... unless something goes wrong, I shouldn't need to....
 

beej

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Joined
Aug 16, 2004
Messages
12,309
Location
Toronto, Canada
Adding a coil split is a pretty simple mod. If you haven't done much wiring before you might want to start practicing on some spare pots, wires, etc. so you can get the feel of what you're doing, though.

In general, coil splits sound "single-coilish", close but not exactly like a good single coil. Often they sound good-enough though.

The one disadvantage with this approach is that when you split a humbucker you're going to create a single coil that induces noise. Works fine when you put this in parallel with another split humbucker (e.g. split neck HB and bridge HB in parallel together) though.

If you're looking to get a good noisefree single coil sound from a HB you can also try a series/parallel switch. With the two coils of the HB in parallel you'll aproximate the split sound fairly closely and the big advantage is that you won't get the hum of a split coil so you can use it in noisy/higher gain situations.

I've done this a bunch of times and the results vary depending on the quality of the pickups you start with. But it's always fun to do this stuff- as you do more of it you can eventually wire in some pretty cool mods to your guitars and dramatically change the sounds you get. Practice first!
 
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