Contrary to popular belief, coil split and coil tap are not just two ways of saying the same thing. There’s quite a big difference in the way they function and the resulting sound. The main effect you get from both is a change is tone and pickup output, but the two sets of electronics go about accomplishing the task in different ways.
A lot of players like to have the option of reducing the output from their guitar pickups. It broadens the available palette of sounds, which is crucial in modern music’s extensive tonal crossovers. This feature is most often found in guitars equipped with hot humbuckers or high-output single coils, as it adds another dimension to the styles you can play with just one guitar.
Nowadays, it’s not as simple as owning a single coil-equipped guitar for “softer” music genres and a humbucker guitar for “heavier” music. The technology is there to expand on guitar tones, so players should naturally expect more diversity across all guitar prices.
Electric Guitar Flame Maple Top Semi Hollow Body Coil Tapping Pickups
Coil splitting only applies to humbucker pickups. Humbuckers consist of two coils and magnets of opposite polarity in order to cancel hum and produce a guitar signal. To split a humbucker is to cut out one coil from the circuit, leaving a single coil to work its magic – just like you’d hear from your standard Strat or Tele.
Why would you want to split the coils of your pickup? Humbuckers produce a very different tone to single coils. They sound thicker, smoother and warmer, with single coils pretty much sounding the polar opposite. It’s good to have the choice of both pickups styles. Single coils are arguably richer in character and dynamism, sitting in a more prominent position on the frequency spectrum. They’re ideal for more nuanced playing or soulful leads – and who wouldn’t want that given the chance?
Similar to how coil splitting essentially halves a humbucker, coil tapping cancels out the full length of the pickup magnet by taking the signal from a shorter point in the wire (usually around the midpoint). It can be utilised in both humbucker and single coil pickups.
Paul Reed Smith
The more windings a pickup has, the more output it produces. And by reducing the amount of wire the signal runs through, you get a lower output that’s more attributed to “vintage” music genres such as classic rock and blues. This is great for recreating an old school tone with a full range frequency and less onus on the midrange.
It’s worth noting that a coil tapped humbucker won’t necessarily sound identical to a single coil pickup unlike coil splitting. There’s a good chance it’ll have more akin to the effect of removing a boost pedal than anything else, reducing a bit of the heat and high-end. Coil tap is generally more of a niche feature and not quite as versatile as coil split. It’s also less frequently used by major companies, but you’ll find it on the occasional Les Paul.
Gibson tend to use coil tap the most out of the big guitar manufacturers. This is so they can equip their guitars with modern pickups, while also offering the option of classic PAF sounds if you’re into that too.
Skysonic Preamp System A 810 Guitar Pickup Humbucker Sound Hole Pickup For Finger Style / Tapping /solo Guitarpick Holder
Coil splitting circuits are usually found on guitars with two humbuckers. It provides you with alternate tones you’d find useful in mixing up your sound, as well as a quick way to change things up in a live situation. Check out Charvel and Schecter to get a good idea.
In reality, there isn’t one circuit better than the other. Find out for yourself if you prefer coil tap’s vintage tone or coil split’s single coil and humbucker versatility.
Cian is a writer for the Andertons team. He shares his birthday with Muse frontman Matt Bellamy and believes he will one day reach the same level of stardom. Cian is a big metal fan so naturally loves Bare Knuckle pickups and pointy guitars.Electronics mods are a great way to expand your tonal palette and get more out of your guitar pickups. They’re mostly easy to do on your own with a soldering iron and a little patience (if you don’t have any experience we’d strongly recommend using a qualified tech), and a wider variety of them are even being offered on easily attainable guitars today.
Strange Wiring/pickup Issue
However, I see an absurd amount of misinformation about some of these modifications, including what phase means, how preamps work, and today’s topic: splitting and tapping. I’d argue that once you’re after some really specific tones and at the level of making aftermarket modifications (or hunting them down on production models) it’s important to understand the etymology so you can get what you’re looking for. What’s the difference between coil splitting and coil tapping?
It’s important to understand what is physically happening to your pickups when you split or tap them, so let’s recap what a guitar pickup is quickly. We’re going to keep this as simple as possible for the purposes of this article. Pickups are what (spoiler alert) “pick up” the sound from a guitar and allow it to be amplified. This makes it a transducer: it changes string vibration into an electrical signal. This is generally accomplished by wrapping wire around a magnet, creating a magnetic field that senses your strings. The type of magnet, the type of wires, how they’re wound, how many times they’re wound, and more, all affect the final tone.
Humbuckers are named as such because they “buck” hum. Traditional single coils are susceptible to hum because pickups happen to also make excellent antennae. They pick up interference easily. The two coils of a humbucker are wound out of phase (with their magnetic poles facing opposite directions) in order to cancel out the hum. Today, humbuckers and single coils are primarily viewed as tools with which you can achieve different tone, but when humbuckers were invented the original purpose was simply to eliminate noise!
Diy Workshop: Easy Pickup Mods Anyone Can Try, Part Two
Splitting does exactly as its name describes: splits a humbucker in two. It deactivates one coil and leaves the other active. This gives a good approximation of classic single coil tone. I say “approximation” because that coil wasn’t wound specifically to be a single, so it’s going to be voiced differently, but this can lead to some cool tones all their own! Some pickups even have the coils designed specifically to sound good when split. The problem with this is that noise is reintroduced into your signal. However, if you’re combining it with another pickup, you can keep the 60 cycle hum canceled if the pickups are out of phase with each other and with oppositely oriented poles. Such as a split bridge humbucker and a middle Reverse Wound Reverse Polarity single coil.
Tapping is a bit more technical. Remember how I said wire is wrapped around the magnet to create the pickup? Well, the more wraps of wire around the magnet, the hotter the pickup is going to be. What tapping does is create a lead about halfway through that winding that can be accessed by a switch. Both coils are still active, the humbucker has not been split. This allows you to access that pickup at a lower output level. Speaking in broad strokes, this results in a clearer and more vintage tone. This is used on humbuckers to achieve a more PAF-style tone, and more frequently on hot single coils so they can be brought back down to vintage output levels and excel at cleans or pair better with lower output single coils. I do understand the confusion, because in many circumstances the tone will become thinner, and perform cleans better, which makes it easy to assume “oh, it’s a single coil now.” When done to single coils from the factory stock in a guitar, the feature often isn’t advertised or is just hidden behind some generic “advanced switching” moniker. The advantage of tapping is that no hum is reintroduced into the signal because both coils are still active when tapping a humbucker, and that you can get very balanced tones out of Stratocaster sets when tapping a hot single coil. Similar to coil splitting, due to how hotter pickups are designed, tapped tones are more of an approximation of traditional lower output tone, and vary wildly when tapping different kind of pickups.
So there you have it! The fog has been removed. This article is super basic, and it’s important to remember that there are even more options and specific instances of things being done differently. Check back periodically for more technical articles on electronics! Also have a look at some of our other content such as reviews uploaded daily!Way back when… and I mean way back when, I was working in a guitar shop and it was right about the time that the concept of the Superstrat REALLY took off. It was the early 90’s and affordable guitars that allegedly bridged the gap between a Strat and a Les Paul were just about everywhere.
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Every month I opened up Guitarist magazine be treated to the latest advert from companies like Washburn, Jackson, Ibanez, Charvel
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