Megaswitch/Superswitch options for dual humbuckers

[greiswig]

Hi, all,

I have a 30th anniversary Cu24 that I put some different pickups in. I like the bridge and neck positions better with the Zhang pickups, but I am having the same issue with the 2 and 4 positions that I had before: they are too similar to one another.

I have another dual humbuckers, a 22 fret, where those two positions are #2 slug coils in parallel and #4 screw coils in parallel. Those are quite different. But I do lose some volume, definitely.

I'm wondering why nobody does something like putting those coils in series instead? So 1 would be bridge, 2 would be slug coils in series, 3 would be both HBs in parallel, 4 would be screw coils in series, and 5 would be neck.

Anybody know if that is a good-sounding option? And then there's the issue of the switches: I can't seem to find any diagrams that show that with even a Megaswitch or Superswitch. Anybody know of a source?

 

[Johan Allard]

Just to throw something else in there is that I really like the option of having each humbucker in parallel (i.e. both the slug and screw coil of the neck humbucker in parallel) as a different option. In my Cu22 I've installed a Freeway Ultra switch (http://www.freewayswitch.com) giving 6 different sounds - Bridge Humbucker in Series, Bridge Humbucker in Parallel, Slug coils in Parallel, Slug coils in series, Neck Humbucker in Series, Neck Humbucker in Parallel.

Originally this Cu22 came with the rotary switch that had Bridge Humbucker in Series, Screw coils in Parallel, Slug coils in Series, Slug coils in Parallel, Neck Humbucker in Series. For me, I thought that there wasn't enough of a difference between Screw coils and Slug coils in Parallel, at least with the original pickups.

If it was me I would probably use the superswitch with the following option if you can: Bridge Series, Bridge Parallel, Slug coils Parallel, Neck Parallel, Neck Series. I've found the more single coilish sound of the Neck or Bridge in Parallel more useful than the in between sounds of either the slug or screw coils in either parallel or series. The reason I'd pick the slug coils in parallel for position 3 over slug coils in Series is to get more of a difference and have one semi-quacky option. You probably need to experiment yourself. When I worked out what I wanted to do on my Cu22 I unsoldered everything and bought a pack for crocodile clip cables and just manually ad-hoc wired the guitar in all different options and had a listen. The slug or screw coils in series is a definitely a useful sound that is louder than the equivalent parallel sounds.

One final thing to be aware of is that in order to get hum-cancelling, you always need to use one north and one south polarity coil. Normally if you buy humbuckers that would fit in a Les Paul or something the magnetic poles would be Neck:South-North North-South:Bridge. I.e. the screw coils are always south polarity and the slug coils north polarity. Since I knew I wanted to use these with these in-between wiring options, I ordered a set of Bareknuckle VHII's with the neck magnet flipped (this is the same as the PRS pickups that have the in-between options) so my magnets are North-South North-South from Neck to Bridge. If you haven't ordered your pickups specifically, you can still get some (other) in-between options but when you mix a coil from each humbucker you'd have to use the screw coil from one and the slug coil from the other. If that messes with your OCD you can flip the neck pickup so you get the slug coil closest to the neck and the screw coil towards the bridge. Again, it's definitely worthwhile to experiment with all of this, and a fun afternoon for sure.

Good luck!

 

[greiswig]

Thanks for the input, Johan. I definitely will try hard-wiring some things before deciding for sure.

I wish Schaller showed some more options for their Megaswitch E and E+...I suspect there is more flexibility than is shown on their web page.