Single-Coil Tone from Humbucker with FET Boost

State of Epicicity

State of Epicicity

Fractal Fanatic
Okay, I may be crazy. Okay, if you ask my wife I'm definitely crazy.

But I think the FET Boost might be the secret weapon to get single-coil tone out of a humbucker. Purists may crucify me for saying this, but to my ears, it's a damn good substitute for an actual single-coil, and that's good enough for me.

I have my two humbucker super strat wired so that I have series / parallel / North coil / South coil available for each pickup, and I'm always trying to get Strat tones (hot ones, that is) out of my guitar, but, as the age old lament is, mains hum sucks. I can get wonderfully stratty tones with this wiring when I split to the South coil, which I've positioned to be closest to the neck, but I'm always angling for a hum-free way. I've been dreaming of buying ZexCoil Tribuckers in the future, but let me you, I think now this FET Boost may be all I need. I'm reading tonight that this is a FAS creation, and I'm kicking myself for only coming across this now.

I sometimes go through this seemingly futile cycle of trying different amps and ODs to simulate single-coil tone out of humbuckers, and normally I've just found really disappointing results, so instead I'll just split, roll my tone knob back to simulate a 250K, and deal with the hum. But tonight I put the FET Boost in front of the Triple Crown channel 2 model with my humbuckers in series mode, and holy hellfire, here you go...single-coil tone!

Again, single-coil enough for me, anyway!

Maybe someone else is on this kind of quest too, and if so, I highly recommend this. In addition, that Triple Crown second channel is just a great, very responsive amp, by the way. Channel 3 is maybe my favorite high gain. Bruce Zinky by way of Randall Smith is a pretty great combination. :)
 
chrisni said:
@2112 has this topic covered in one of his latest videos


TL;DW: Use an EQ match between your desired source and target pickup tones, throw it in an EQ block.

Another way to do it - that I am very interested in - is the Keyztone Exchanger pedal. It magically transforms any input pickup to a selectable target pickup.
Click to expand...

Saw that.. it is a good trick.
 
chrisni said:
@2112 has this topic covered in one of his latest videos


TL;DW: Use an EQ match between your desired source and target pickup tones, throw it in an EQ block.

Another way to do it - that I am very interested in - is the Keyztone Exchanger pedal. It magically transforms any input pickup to a selectable target pickup.
Click to expand...


This is a badass way to that. I have Tokyo Dawn Records SlickEQ Gentleman's Edition, which has a match function, so I might try it with that too. I used to try all sorts of different pedal / amp combinations before, but with my humbucker in the neck, I had never been able to dial out the mids properly.
 
Besides the zexcoils, which I never played/owned, for a humfree HB/SC experience, I have put the Fishman Fluence Classics in one guitar (PRS SE Floyd), and it has an SC mode that you can switch on. It's not a perfect Strat SC but it's close to how the noiseless N3 Strat SCs sound. Good pickups.
 
666was999 said:
Besides the zexcoils, which I never played/owned, for a humfree HB/SC experience, I have put the Fishman Fluence Classics in one guitar (PRS SE Floyd), and it has an SC mode that you can switch on. It's not a perfect Strat SC but it's close to how the noiseless N3 Strat SCs sound. Good pickups.
Click to expand...

I did look at those, and I called Fishman, and they told me the split is not actually hum free. Then I found this video:

 
You say it is still humunig? Hm, I did not notice that. But when I switch to the neck PU I usually switch to a clean sound in the same moment. It seems I never tried some more distorted tones on that SC mode. I should go try that.
 
That’s the thing that bugs me a lot with Fluence marketing: going by their website, you’d think everything was noiseless all down the line, including splits.

You can get actual noiseless splits from:

EMG (like the 89, 89R, and anything that ends with TW),
ZexCoil Tribuckers (apparently the most accurate),
JBE Two Tones, and
Lace Duallys.
 
chrisni said:
@2112 has this topic covered in one of his latest videos


TL;DW: Use an EQ match between your desired source and target pickup tones, throw it in an EQ block.

Another way to do it - that I am very interested in - is the Keyztone Exchanger pedal. It magically transforms any input pickup to a selectable target pickup.
Click to expand...


Okay, tonight I was inspired by @2112's awesome video, but I used a different approach:

I wanted to tone match to my neck humbucker when it's split to the outer coil, to eliminate the hum. I had experimented with that, where the basis tone that I was trying to alter was the neck humbucker in series, to get maximum output with hum rejection. But doing that was so drastic. For a while I thought it just didn't work well, because it sounded glitchy on high bends, until I realized I needed to smooth it almost all the way. Even then, it was too drastic: the tone knob just didn't act the same, and the bridge humbucker in series would sound like it was split! But tonight I realized a better way for my goal, and I tone matched the neck humbucker in parallel to the outer coil to the neck humbucker. This worked great! It was subtle enough of a match, because the output was so similar, and it didn't really change the way the tone knob acted. Plus, switching to bridge, it didn't make it sound like a single coil. So with this method I was able to achieve something like a Single Coil Neck - Humbucker Series Bridge tone, when what I'm playing is really a Humbucker Parallel Neck - Humbucker Series Bridge! I love it.

Now I'll have to try this using the FET Boost again, but getting my Neck Parallel to sound like Neck split first, and seeing how that acts. Man, this is fun. Thank you @FractalAudio for the Tone Match block. It truly is changing things for me in the awesomest way!

I've been wanting to switch my neck humbucker to a single-coil, but I just cannot spend any money right now, even on a pickup, so this is a perfect way to simulate my desired HS pickup configuration without an actual split.
 
I did an experiment with my "split coil" EMG 89r. If I added a 6dB high cut filter at the resonant frequency of the opposite mode (single/hum), the sound was rather similar despite the humbucker covering a larger part of the string.

So I'd say add a 6dB high cut somewhere around 2K, and your single coil pick-up will sound quite humbuckerish.
 
State of Epicicity said:
Okay, I may be crazy. Okay, if you ask my wife I'm definitely crazy.

But I think the FET Boost might be the secret weapon to get single-coil tone out of a humbucker. Purists may crucify me for saying this, but to my ears, it's a damn good substitute for an actual single-coil, and that's good enough for me.

I have my two humbucker super strat wired so that I have series / parallel / North coil / South coil available for each pickup, and I'm always trying to get Strat tones (hot ones, that is) out of my guitar, but, as the age old lament is, mains hum sucks. I can get wonderfully stratty tones with this wiring when I split to the South coil, which I've positioned to be closest to the neck, but I'm always angling for a hum-free way. I've been dreaming of buying ZexCoil Tribuckers in the future, but let me you, I think now this FET Boost may be all I need. I'm reading tonight that this is a FAS creation, and I'm kicking myself for only coming across this now.

I sometimes go through this seemingly futile cycle of trying different amps and ODs to simulate single-coil tone out of humbuckers, and normally I've just found really disappointing results, so instead I'll just split, roll my tone knob back to simulate a 250K, and deal with the hum. But tonight I put the FET Boost in front of the Triple Crown channel 2 model with my humbuckers in series mode, and holy hellfire, here you go...single-coil tone!

Again, single-coil enough for me, anyway!

Maybe someone else is on this kind of quest too, and if so, I highly recommend this. In addition, that Triple Crown second channel is just a great, very responsive amp, by the way. Channel 3 is maybe my favorite high gain. Bruce Zinky by way of Randall Smith is a pretty great combination. :)
Click to expand...

Just wanted to share that you're not alone in that quest! I have a PRS McCarty gold top with a pair of Seymour Duncan mini-Humbuckers. The neck pickup is very low DC resistance (6.3k - I think it's an SSH-N1, which they have since replaced). When hitting it hard, it has brilliant Fender-esque Strat tonality! Mini hum buckers came out of left field for me - I was replacing P-90's and they fit beautifully, and they sound truly phenomenal.

My sickness is deeper than that... I just had a Seymour Duncan '5 2' installed in the neck slot of my Strat+, and I ordered a SD Custom Shop model - a 'Strat for Tele' pickup ($$) for my 1993 Tele. Sounds delightful so far. I had previously had a factory neck pickup rewound by the master (John Suhr) years ago, but wanted to try something different
 
State of Epicicity said:
That’s the thing that bugs me a lot with Fluence marketing: going by their website, you’d think everything was noiseless all down the line, including splits.

You can get actual noiseless splits from:

EMG (like the 89, 89R, and anything that ends with TW),
ZexCoil Tribuckers (apparently the most accurate),
JBE Two Tones, and
Lace Duallys.
Click to expand...

And therein lies the problem. It's just marketing. From my experience, Fishman pickups aren't any less noisy than traditional passive pickups. In some cases, I've found them to even be more noisy than passives. Kind of odd when that is one of the main appeals of active pickups in general.

Personally, I got a great Single Coil tone from the JBE Two-Tone HB Set. However, last time I checked they were another sacrifice made to the gear gods for COVID-19 though.
 
There are so many great solutions here; I feel like you almost can’t go wrong. Thanks to everyone writing in with your suggestions!

I am loving the tone match from my neck split outer to my neck parallel; it’s really extraordinary to me. I love the FET Boost, but I had trouble finding a sweet spot that didn’t also change the character of the bridge too drastically; I think that pedal is great way to get both pickups on an HH configuration to sound more like an SS configuration, but I was trying to find a way to keep the bridge sounding like a humbucker while getting the neck humbucker to sound like a single coil. With that in mind, the change with the tone match from neck parallel to emulate the outer split is just subtle enough where all I really need to do is lower the tone knob on the bridge a little to balance, then set the tone on the amp from scratch, and it’s really acting like a neck single coil / bridge humbucker configuration. Not to mention, I’m finding that, with the tone match engaged, I’m even loving the neck in series humbucking mode better!
 
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