2 conductor pickup limitations

[Trey]

What are the exact limitations of a two wire pickup compared to a four wire version? What wiring mods can be done with a four wire pickup that can't be done with a two wire verison, and are there anyways to make a two wire pickup more versaitle?

[Mike Richardson]

It depends on the pickup. With typical Strat pickups, you can wire them to phase reversal switches or wire pickups in series. The same goes for older DiMarzio PAF units. I wouldn't generally wire stacked Strat pickups in series, simply because they don't seem to "like it"
very much.

[Happyguy]

With a four wire humbucker you can cut a coil (or the other one), put one coil out-of-phase with the other and wire the coils in series or paralell (still can't spell it:P). You can't do this with a two wire humbucker (the are usually wired in series and in phase i think), but i think Wolf has a page up showing how to bring 4 wires out of a 2 wire one. The four wires are basically a lead and a ground for each coil of the pickup (I think lol) so if you join the lead of one to the ground of the other the remaning wires are a lead and ground for the whole pickup. Thus a 2 wire pickup. Somebody will correct if this is totally off

have a happy day!

[wolf]

trey
Okay the page for bringing out 4 wires from a 2 wire humbucker are located here:
www.1728.com/guitar1a.htm
As is well-known, my hatred for the Gibson "sealed-for-eternity, chrome-covered, Epoxy-filled 'bricks" is well-known.
As a matter of fact those "bricks" are actually 1 wire pickups. You see, the "braid" and the minus connection are joined together well-inside the pickup and are also permanently attached to the chrome cover. SO, even if you want to try "out-of-phase" combinations, the chrome cover becomes a "hot" connection, will buzz when you touch it, and will cause a "dead-short" if the string hits the chrome cover.

I will NEVER buy a guitar that has sealed-for eternity brick pickups. It's bad enough when you have to take a pickup apart and put in 4 conductor shielded cable yourself. But Gibson adds insult to injury when they won't even allow one of those crappy chrome creations to be accessed in the least.