An alternative way to wire your 4 wire SD humbucker pickup

Rocker

Many years ago Dr Bob had a regular feature on Guitarist magazine.  Once he described a method of wiring a Seymour Duncan pickup [with 4 wires] that uses the tone control as a partial coil split.  I did it to my Les Paul but only on the bridge pickup, the neck pickup is standard humbucker wiring.  I have no idea how to draw a circuit diagram on a computer so I am attempting to describe how it is.

From the Seymour Duncan website:

All Seymour Duncan humbuckers with four-conductor hookup wires incorporate a standard wire color code.

     GREEN = start of adjustable/south coil

      RED = finish of adjustable/south coil

      BLACK = start of stud/north coil

      WHITE = finish of stud/north coil

For standard series humbucking operation on a 4-Conductor wired humbucker the White & Red wires are soldered together and taped; Green is ground and Black is Hot Output. The bare wire is always grounded.

On my Les Paul the Red and White wires are soldered to one end of the tone control pot.  The Black is the pickup output.  The Green is connected to the earth as is the bare wire.  The wiper of the tone control pot is connected to earth.  The capacitor is connected to the other end of the tone control pot and earth.

The effect is that when the tone control pot is approximately half way, the sound is normal humbucker output.  Turn it one way and it acts as a partial single coil pickup.  Turned the other way it is a tone control.  I am not sure if I ever get the full humbucker sound but it gives a very nice sound into a Marshall plus 4 * 12 cab.  Apologies is this has been covered before.

JMP220478

@ICBM ;  - is this the circuit you described to me ?

ICBM

Yes. You do get the normal full humbucker sound with the tone control at about 8, with a Log pot.