Dylan McKerchie — Electric Guitar Wiring

Hum is bad.... No matter where we are, Radio Frequency interference is there. In the worst case scenario, It could be severe enough that you could hear voices or music from a radio station. More often, neon and fluorescent lights, dimmer switches, Televisions and all sorts of other devices can cause unwanted hum and crackling. High impedance guitar circuits are susceptible to this. Humbucker Pickups cut down on a lot of this. Learn more about how they do this here. While pickup construction and quality can have a major effect on the amount of RF interference, the rest of the...

Tone Caps... Highly Debated yet Very Simple Some people don't use their tone knob at all... Others constantly are fiddling with it. How does it work? First off, the tone circuit in a passive system is a filter. It can only cut frequencies from what is available from the pickups. Anytime we speak of "boosting lows" for instance in a passive system, we are cutting other frequencies to accentuate the lows. The tone circuit in your guitar usually consists of a pot that is used as a variable resistor that sends the signal through a cap (filter) to ground. The...

One of the hottest topics on the internet is 250k vs 500k pots and why we choose what we choose..... The answer seems simple... But WHY? The common answer to this debate seems easy. 250k pots for single coils and 500k for humbuckers. Let's get into why these have become the most common choices. Basic Rules of Electronics 1. Electricity always takes the path of least resistance to ground... ALWAYS. 2. Anytime there is a path to ground for your guitar signal, high frequencies are the first to go. The simple guitar circuit would consist of the pickup, two wires...

What does "Out of Phase" mean? This is of course another term that we hear often. Maybe we have replaced a pickup and experienced it... That quacky thin sound when we turn both pickups on at the same time. Most of the time it is not on purpose, although this tone does have it's place. What causes it? In electric guitar land the term "out of phase" refers to a cancellation of sounds that happens when two pickups that have either opposite winding direction, or opposite magnetic polarity are turned on at the same time. The video below will illustrate...

Coil Splitting Vs Coil Tapping.... These are two terms we often hear when discussing pickups and switching options on electric guitars. More commonly we hear the term "coil tapping", but it seems that most people use them interchangeably. What is coil splitting vs coil tapping and how do we use them? Let's start with coil splitting, because even though it is commonly mislabeled as "coil tapping", it is more often what we actually mean. Coil splitting is used on humbucking pickups to basically turn off one of the coils so that it acts as a single coil. This gives the...