335 coil taps

Gibson 335 with '57 classic humbuckers, great sound but no coil taps so a bit limited, decided to fit coil taps, 8 hour total rewire nightmare but finally got the electrics back in and I have a 335 which will do very Fender-ish sounds on demand Why oh why don't they put rear access plates on these things??? Btw does anyone know how to put dislocated knuckles back in place?

By contrast, yesterday I was messing about with the wiring in my tele, changing the value of the caps and playing with series/parallel settings (it has a humbucker at the bridge, with its coils in parallel, pretty nice). And I love the ease... you can even leave the strings on! just lift the control plate, solder, unsolder, plug in and see what happens... Nice design.

Jose

NP: Kula Shaker 'Grateful when you're dead'

That is a very tasty sounding guitar! I've the urge to get a guitar with two coil-tapped humbuckers, but have heard that you lose out on the overall tone of the pick-ups; is this true? Or is it just that the coil-tapped sound isn't quite as good as a true single coil pick-up (which is something that wouldn't bother me as I already have a guitar with single coils).

Just take to cracking them loudly around people - doesn't help the joints at all, but it's fun to watch people wince...

Cheers,

It doesn't change the humbucking (non coil-tapped) sound of the pickup at all (or shouldn't do if wired correctly), but the coil-tapped sound is lower output than a normal single coil pickup would be... personally I like this as it gives you more of a contrast. Humbucking pickups that are actually designed to be coil-tapped - unlike the 57 Classics - don't have this problem though, well the Seymour Duncans I have on 2 of my guitars don't anyway.

I have a 347 with the coil taps and Gibsons Dirty Fingers pickups. Not sure if it splits the coil in the manner you describe or not, but it makes for a very versatile guitar. Get reasonably good Strat sounds out of it aswell as blistering humbucking stuff. Lovely stuff

What? And do fishing shops out of a lucrative trade in fishing line? Hellish doing a semi, isn't it?

I hade the pickups on my Les Paul DC tapped (490 at the neck and 498 at the bridge) and never really got along with the single coil sound that they produced. Of course that may well be because the pickups are a little flat sounding anyway.

I've just fitted a SD Seth Lover in the neck position and wired it to the switch to allow series/parallel and I really like the sound of that. Nowhere near as much volume drop as splitting the pickup and a very full sound - just more treble and less middle than the humbucker. Definitely worth trying.