The World's Most Wanted 'Single HumBucker'

[toneninja]

Hi there,
i simply love single coil fenderish clean bell tones.

and i just cant stand high output humbuckers.

i mean i tries to like them, and ive spent countless hours listening to all type of high output humbuckers but i never really digg that woofy, muddy, high output sound.

however, there is an exception:
low output pafs with tye famous Peter green Mod (basically having both humbuckers out of phase in the middle position).
if you listen to the whole story there, you can hear how cool the overdriven sound.
Listen here

so, on one hand a straty clean tone is non negociable,
but on the other hand, i feel that low output humbuckers beat single coils when correctly overdriven, they kind of 'sing' more if you see what i mean.

After a lot of research here are some type of humbuckers that can do the job of sounding more or less like a single coil:

Fralin 
unbucker - big single - twangmaster 

novak curtis
wide range humbucker (in normal humbucker format)

peter green mod Paf
( throbak, stephen design, and few more, when out of phase)

telenator
wide range humbucker, but its only for wide range format routing

amber pickups (germany)
p94 ( basically a p90 im humbucker size), he is the one who actually helped gibson develop the p94.

then you have lollar and other pickup makers, who also offer single coil in humbucker format but these are basically just p90 in bucker size
which is ok, but i just find the p90's to be too midrangy.

All these are somehow Ok, but its not really what im looking for.

by the way ive checked the trons, but the sound is just too dry to my taste.

ive heard that the kinman twangbucker is a true single coil in humbucker format, but i could not find a demo anywhere.

so my question too my felow single coil stratty lovers outthere is:

is there any wiring trick, formula, or any pickup out there that would give a sound of a single coil with a humbucker size.
something in between a p90 and a hot single coil, in humbucker format ?

a humbucker sized pickup, that woukd produce true single bell clean tones, with the juiciness of a low outout peter green style humbucker when overdriven

that would turn a humbucker guitar into an amazingly versatile machine.

your help is highly appreciated, ive been searching for several months now, nothing truly convincing yet.

p.s:
im currently investigating mini buckers and firebird pickups as well
p.p.s:
any demo of the kinman twangbucker would be welcome !

[sumgai]

tn,

Welcome to The NutzHouse!

In your request above, you refer more than once to overdriven pickups, particularly those that 'sing' when overdriven.  I think you've confused the terminology here - pickups aren't driven, they drive other circuitry.  That said, you have now introduced a very wide range of possible answers to your question, whether you knew it or not.

The fact is, to be overdriven, or achieve an 'overdriven' sound, the output of a pickup is what 'drives' a circuit out of linear operation, forcing it to distort the signal in some fashion, hopefully pleasingly so.  You do correctly refer to pickups as being either high- or low-output, and that's proper terminology.  And thus, higher output pickups will indeed force a circuit to distort more easily than a lower output pickup, that's simple to comprehend.

But where I have to scratch my head in trying to parse your request is this: you want a single coil sound to come out of a pickup that is sized like a humbucker - is that correct?

Err, isn't that what almost everyone else here is doing, in one fashion or another?  Or am I being too quick to parse your request in terms with which I am familiar...  I note that you don't refer, in your bolded sentence, to any switching.  It would appear that you want to achieve a difference in tone merely by how strongly you strike the strings, thus how strongly you 'drive' the pickup.  If that's the case, then it's easy to see why you chose to word your request as you did - it made sense to you, and now it does to me also, provided this is what you want.

But then you go on to ask if there are any 'trick' circuits that can arrive at this solution, and my head is back on its way to spinning 'round and 'round, wondering what you want.  So.  I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and pretend that you're asking if a humbucker-sized pickup can be made to sound like a single coil.

Short answer - no.

Better answer: not exactly, but close.

Detailed answer:  The NutzHouse is full of threads/topics dealing with this very request, check around.  Our Search function might give you what you want, or you can use Google to zero in on something more quickly.

As to other pickups, let me bring this to you: you can make a clear and clean sound into something dirty, but neither you nor anyone else on this planet can clean up a dirty sound.  In this instance, an 'overdriven'* sound that starts out that way can never be brought to a state of sounding clear and clean - it just can't happen.  So what you (seem) to want to do is start out clear and clean, and feed it to some circuitry that will dirty it up, in just the right tonality.  That spells Kinman, right there.

I know, I know, there are probably 3 dozen pickup companies out there that can do the same thing, or at least they claim to.  But when all the shouting has died down and everyone's gone back home, there's a reason Kinman charges more for his product - because it lives up to the hype.  Pure and simple, if Chris Kinman says it's good, it is good, period.  How do I know?

Because I've installed several sets of these things (mostly the Strat variety) into both hard-tail and Trem-O-Leo axes, and they always sound better than my own Strat, which has the SCn jobbies (originally designed for the Jeff Beck model, from the Custom Shop).  That's a pretty tall hurdle to clear, as most players will tell you.  Zero hum, crystal bell clarity, and yet they can sing the blues all night, come Hell or high water.

I would not hesitate to buy and install a Twangbucker, based on my experience with Kinman, no additional sound clips needed.  But just to complete the process here, I must remind you that no matter what anyone tells you, a sound clip played on any computer, particularly those sourced over the Internet (especially YouTube!), will not be a true and faithful reproduction of the real thing.  There are far too many limitations along the way, making even "side by side" comparisons a matter for ridicule.

You might ask around your local players' hangouts if anyone has tried Kinmans, or you might ask on the web, where you'll find both adherents and naysayers (no one has a 100 percent positive record, not even Kinman**).  All I can recommend is that you listen to others with an open mind, some folks have personal agendas.

There ya go, I hope that helped.

sumgai

* Abusing terminology, I know, but it keeps the references in this topic on the same train of thought, without need for external translation.

** The reason some players "didn't like their Kinmans" was price.  That was their business, sure, but I think they were cutting off their nose to spite their face.  There's no pleasing some people, no matter how hard one tries.

[numpty]

Humbuckers wired in parallel can sound very single-ish AND still buck the hum, plus, if switched between single/parallel/series, give you a couple of options for tone shaping. There are also mid-cut and bass-cut circuits to throw into the mix to trim a humbuckers lower end power. Just some food for thought for the original poster.

[Charlie Honkmeister]

Two to add to the mix:

1.  Joe Barden Two Tone -   I got a set of these in about 2003 or so.   Very nice single coil sound from a humbucking package.  Wiring the DPDT switch to the pickup is a bit of a pain.   

2.  (near future) - my variable resonance control on a humbucker.   Might be worth the wait,  I have the solution for Strat sized single coils but am doing humbuckers in the next month or two.   The key spec is that the pickup you use has to be "vintage" wind (7-8K DCR or thereabouts)  and about 4 Henries inductance in normal series coil mode.    

music-electronics-forum.com/t43081/

-Charlie

[JFrankParnell]

The Fralin Unbuckers are going to be my next pups, for the best of both worlds.

However, if you really want to stay with a single coil, use a compressor to fatten them up and make them 'sing' more.