Steve Morse Pickups Questions

[OneHandedFunk]

So I recently bought my first Ernie Ball, and it's a Steve Morse (original model). I have a few questions about the pickups, can anyone help me out?

For comparison, take a look at the image below. HSH and a 5-way switch. When you are on positions 2 and 4 it splits whichever bucker it's using, and the single coil is wound to cancel the hum with these split buckers, which gives it a super quacky/twangy sound.

Now here's my question: when you select one of the humbuckers and one of the single coils together (either 1&2 or 3&4), the Steve Morse doesn't split the humbucker as in the above diagram, is this correct? As far as I know, if I select both the neck humbucker and the neck single coil on the SM, the entire bucker is active, as opposed to splitting it (but I'm not positive, and I'm not good with wiring, which is why I'm seeking advice).

The reason I ask is that I'm thinking about switching out a couple of the pickups on my SM to see what tones I can come up with (thinking about an Air Norton or PAF Joe in the neck and an Area '67 in the neck SC), but I just don't know enough about this kind of stuff and about this guitar specifically. Please educate me!

 

[fbecir]

Hello and welcome !
First of all, where are the pictures of your Morse ? No pics = no guitar !

For the pickups, you are right : the humbuckers are never splitted.
If you need some advices for doing some changes, ask Beej : he made a lot of modifications on his Morse.

 

[beej]

Welcome! Ok, first off the switching diagram for the Morse can be found here.

As fbecir mentioned, the 'buckers aren't wired up to split. The way Steve Morse uses his guitar is all about combinations of pickups- he'll add the bridge single to the bridge HB to reduce the output and get a cleaner tone, etc. He doesn't use the neck single much (hence why there isn't one on the Y2D, the 20 year anniversary Morse), or quack tones.

I've tried a number of different wiring schemes for my Morse (including putting a piezo in there) and while you can get it to do just about anything, I find it's best to figure out what you really need rather than just switching things up.

Currently I have wired in another toggle switch that splits the bridge & neck. It's wired up to a Silent Circuit so they're not noisy. I've also replaced the stock singles with Bill Lawrence L200s (they're better than the Areas btw, they don't compress in the same way and sound a tad more natural). Other than that and the piezo the switching is about the same.

The neck split sounds ok. The bridge split sounds excellent, it's really twangy! If you don't use your tone control, one other excellent way to split it is to wire the tone pot up as a variable split (gradually ground one coil). You can then dial in the amount of split you want, works well. (I've got my Y2D wired up like that.)

All food for thought. My advice is to really play it a while and get used to it before you think about making any changes. It's a very versatile guitar and once you get used to the switching, it's very intuitive. Odds are you might not want to change a thing.

 

[OneHandedFunk]

Thanks for the very good information!

Well i've had the SM for long enough to know that i love every sound it makes, but what i really wish it had that it currently doesn't is that really twangy sound. It has a bit, but not enough.

I think i'll take your advice though and play it for a few more months and do a reevaluation of my tone then.

 

[beej]

Excellent. Well for that twangy sound, I'd say think about adding a coil split for the bridge, that'll get you there.