Any reason to coil-tap DiMarzio humbucking P-90?

[BlackAngusYoung]

Hello, I have a question about pickups and some alternate wiring. I'm pretty new to the subject. Hoping to replace my stock pickups with something a little nicer in a guitar I love everything about but the pickups.

I think I will buy DiMarzio Bluesbuckers. I understand they will not sound as good as real P-90s but as my first decent pickups I'm sure I'll be impressed. As I understand them, it's basically a P-90 pickup fashioned to look like a single-coil and then joined to another coil to buck the hum. The humbucking is very important to me because I play usually with headphones while trying to concentrate on YouTube guitar lessons, so the hum is especially distracting. I want the P-90ish Bluesbuckers in order to lean my Epiphone Les Paul in the direction of the Les Pauls before Rock & Roll. For instance, Les Paul's. Goldtop would be ok, too.

The directions suggest that the Bluesbuckers can be coil-tapped for a single coil sound. What I'm wondering is... if they're made to sound like P-90's, with a second coil added just to buck the hum... wouldn't that mean that a coil-tap would just make them sound like P-90's with hum?

I've been reading a lot of info about the different pickup upgrade options and it is a little overwhelming. Any help on understanding this type would be much appreciated.

[ChrisK]

wouldn't that mean that a coil-tap would just make them sound like P-90's with hum?

Yep.

I'm not familiar with the Dimarzio hum canceling P-90s, but I am familiar with the Seymour Duncan P-90 Stack. This has the same structure as a traditional P-90 with the second reverse wound coil underneath the top coil and side facing bar magnets.

I've found that using only the top coil does have different sounds that using both (it's brighter and nosier). When I use just the top coil, I usually select it in concert with a RWRP coil from another pickup so that the combination is hum canceling.

I have noticed two things with these pickups; first, the sound sensing window is virtually identical regardless of coil(s) selected (the magnetic structure is the same), and second, the bottom coil is also active from the string sensing perspective (it's not just a dummy coil as in other stacked pickups).

Relating to the first thing, this is why a side-by-side humbucker can never sound like a single coil; while you may have only one coil selected, the magnetic structure is the same and sensing will still occur from both rows of poles.

Relating to the second thing, the bottom coil alone is a softer sound, slightly reduced (eh, -6dB'ish?) in amplitude as compared to the top coil. This gives some level blending options on guitars with only a master volume control. Also, since the bottom coil is active, parallel coil configurations are equally valid as are the traditional series configuration. In parallel you get a softer (again, eh, -3'ish dB as a swag) output with the frequency response raised an octave as compared to that in series.


I must confess that I'm familiar with this pickup not out of insight into its features, but solely due to MF having the neck version as cut-outs from scrapped new production guitars back in the 2002 time frame (9/11 put a lot of people out of business) for $20 each. I bought a metric few of them.

Yeah, I know, a new sucker is born everyday. ;D ;D


I do like the sound and options. Be aware that they are more than a bit deeper than a traditional P-90.