MIMF

I am nearing completion of a guitar and will be wiring it soon. It's a 25" scale, thinline tele shape with two humbuckers and single volume and tone controls. I was planning on coil tapping the pickups, with one push/pull controlling the neck and the other the bridge pickup. But after thinking about it, I don't think I really need that fine grained control. A single switch would likely make more sense to tap both at the same time.

So I read up on some other options. Phase switching, series vs parallel. I read one place where someone recommended using one switch per pickup and having the switch make the coils parallel which gives a similar sound to a single coil while remaining humfree. This was intriguing.

So quickly I got a little overwhelmed at my options. I wanted to poll the crowd and ask what you might have tried before and liked. I'm looking for a nice versatile guitar, but I want the tones to remain musical useful. I'm primarily a rock/blues guy.

I suppose it doesn't make a difference, but the pickups are Bare Knuckle Mules.

For me, switching to parallel is not as good as a real single-coil sound. So what I would do is use one pot to switch both pickups to single coil, and use the other to switch in an active preamp!

Thanks, Mark. Tell me more about this preamp. What might I expect from it? Stronger output signal? I should have room for a battery in there.

Yes, a preamp will boost your signal as much as you want, there are many types of applications for active electronics in a guitar. Pull out that pot and have instant power! There are a bunch of preamps on the market, some of us make our own. There's a lot of info in our Library Archive here about building your own, and Guitar Fetish has some good ones too.

I will check those out. Thanks!

Here is what I had been leaning towards.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/produc ... ne005.html

And this one to reverse phase.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/produc ... ml#reviews

Ok, after a few more hours of searching this morning, I think this is what I've been looking for. I'd really appreciate any feedback.