Coil Tapping a Les Paul

[Drak_nyen]

Hiya,

Ive got an Epiphone Les Paul Custom & I am looking to get a single coil type noise from it.

I know some guitars have a coil tap which by pulling on a pot (or by a different switch position) can change it from humbucker to only single coil operation.

I would like to be able to do this with my Les Paul.

Would I need specific type of pickup to do this?

What type of pot would i need to install into the guitar to do this.

I would like to be able to coil tap both the bridge and neck pickups using the 2 volume (or tone) pots, if this is possible.

OK be honest is this possible or am I just hoping??

Any help/advice/suggestion would be appreciated.

Cheers Everyone
Pete

[fonosatch]

yo dude,

sorry can't help you with the coil tapped business but would be damn cool to do, you could check out some guitars that have this feature and look at how it works, i think the ibanez js signature is coil tapped.

On a different note i was looking at buying one of the les paul custom in black. What do you think of it? have you tried a gibson les paul if so how do they compare?

cheers Drak_nyen,

steve

[eamon7]

i'm no expert but i'm pretty sure you can't do it with the stock pickups because you can not split the coils. they only have one lead coming out of them. a lot of replacement pups like dimarzio or semore d are split and have 2 leads coming out of them. the 2 leads can be used to put the pickups out of phase or to use as a single coil if you want. take the back cover off and where the wires are soldered to the volume knobs look and see if there is a braided lead and see how many wires are coming out of the braid. i'll bet there is only one. you need one with 2

[Supersonic]

Eamon7 is correct. You need a 4 lead (wire) humbucker to do this and Epi's (Gibson) come stock with 2 lead conductors. Look into replacing the pickups and check out this site for wiring diagrams.http://www.guitarelectronics.com/cat...ringresources/

[Drak_nyen]

Originally Posted by fonosatch

yo dude,

sorry can't help you with the coil tapped business but would be damn cool to do, you could check out some guitars that have this feature and look at how it works, i think the ibanez js signature is coil tapped.

On a different note i was looking at buying one of the les paul custom in black. What do you think of it? have you tried a gibson les paul if so how do they compare?

cheers Drak_nyen,

steve

Hiya Steve,

For the money mate I love the Epiphone Les Paul. They are good guitars, decent body on mine with a nice wide neck which is perfect for my gorilla hands.
For sound the stock pickups are well, stock really BUT they are alot better than some of the stock pickups I have seen on some guitars.

I have tried a Gibson Les Paul but it was acoustic only and not plugged up live and I must say the Gibson neck felt nicer but again for the money you would expect that.

The best option would be to find a shop with one in it and have a play with it.

Hope that helps
Pete

[Drak_nyen]

Originally Posted by eamon7

i'm no expert but i'm pretty sure you can't do it with the stock pickups because you can not split the coils. they only have one lead coming out of them. a lot of replacement pups like dimarzio or semore d are split and have 2 leads coming out of them. the 2 leads can be used to put the pickups out of phase or to use as a single coil if you want. take the back cover off and where the wires are soldered to the volume knobs look and see if there is a braided lead and see how many wires are coming out of the braid. i'll bet there is only one. you need one with 2

Yeah I had a feeling that the stock pickups would be unusable.

I will have to investigate a new pickup choice for this one to play classic rock/blues type music.

As for the Pots, is there anything specific that I need to know there???

Cheers
Pete

[mcnach]

I would not bother about the coil taps. I think their usefulness is very limited, they only sound like an anemic single coil to me (your experience may vary!).

In my opinion, it is far more interesting to be able to select both pickups in series or in parallel. By default they are in parallel. If you hook them up in series via a push/pull switch, you'll get a beefier sound that I find more interesting. And you should be able to do that with the existing pickups!

Another thing I like to do on humbuckers (but you need 4-wire ones for this too) is to be able to select both coils in parallel (the normal humbucker uses two coils in series). This will still be humbucking, and it will have lower output, not quite like a single coil, but better (to my ears) generally than a coil tap.
The only case where a coil tap sounds good to me is in a strat with a humbucker at the bridge. In this case I coil tap the bridge to be able to get that "in between" sound, using the middle single coil plus one of the coils of the humbucker.