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Is it possible to use a balance potentiometer to blend/split the coils of a humbucking pickup on an electric guitar?

A humbucking pickup is (basically) just two single-coil pickups placed close together in a noise cancelling configuration (single-coil pickups of yesteryear were notoriously willing to accept electrical interference, sending noise to your amp). I've seen many guitars with humbucking coil splitting options, but all of them are single option type, such as deactivating the inner coils of a pair of humbuckers with a push-pull tone pot, or more recently the push-push pot, still used as a tone pot.

Would it be possible to, instead, use a balance fader to control the output of the 2 coils in 1 humbucking pickup? If, for example, the fader was set in the center indent, it was a perfect 50/50 humbucker. Turned full left would give North coil only, full right giving South coil only, with fade in between.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Please draw a simple schematic of how you want to wire the pickups and poti. \$\endgroup\$
    – tobalt
    Commented May 22, 2021 at 4:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ +1 for turning to an electronics forum with your issue instead of a Voodoo-Leaning 'audiophile' 'buy-gold-cables' 'buy-new-pickups-for-500-€' place. \$\endgroup\$
    – tobalt
    Commented May 22, 2021 at 6:29

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This depends a bit on where/how you want to insert the potentiometer but generally is a bad idea for passive pickups.

The moment you get more than a few kOhm in series with a pickup, you will damp its resonance a lot making the sound very dull. Single coils are especially susceptible to this.

The same goes for less than about 200 kOhm in parallel to a pickup, which will damp the resonances already significantly.

So if you find a configuration which avoids both of these while blending, it is possible.

For active pickups it is different: you can buffer both single coils, then blend them with a low resistance pot (1-10 kOhm). For basses, this kind of blend knob is indeed widespread, but there it is used to blend between bridge and neck pickups.

Doing it for two coils in a humbucker however might have questionable benefits. After all, the two single coils are so close, that their individual sounds should be extremely similar.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Sorry to digress (a little) but your answer suggests that the loading provided by the amplifier input is critical to the proper operation of the pickups. Amplifiers that I’ve worked on do seem to have somewhat differing input characteristics, so is that something to be aware of when considering the overall sound quality? \$\endgroup\$
    – Frog
    Commented May 22, 2021 at 6:13
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Frog The loading by the amp input is generally negligible and inconsequential at >1MOhm typical. The problem is the capacitive loading by the cable, which is several 100 pF usually. For passive pickups the cable capacitance is a crucial part of the sound, and differently long cables will change the resonance frequency. But adding series resistance will form a low pass with the cable and damp the resonances which is a much more pronounced effect..you can simulate this by turning the volume knob down a little to 8-9 -> loses a lot of high-end resonance. \$\endgroup\$
    – tobalt
    Commented May 22, 2021 at 6:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you @tobalt \$\endgroup\$
    – Frog
    Commented May 22, 2021 at 6:26
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Yes in principle you could certainly do it. I guess the downside would be that you would lose a certain amount of signal in the potentiometer and potentially increase the source impedance which could lead to increased noise. It’s a trade off between the two, so you’d choose the potentiometer value accordingly.

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