[gregr]

I’m not a fan of split humbuckers but will tolerate them when one coil is shunted by a resistor or in some cases a pair of resistors and a capacitor.

Assuming I would use one wired in series most of the time, why wouldn’t I want to buy a Fantom P90 instead and use a treble-peaker in order to get more of a Strat-style single coil tone out of it?

I recently saw a video on YouTube where the guy noticed a significant loss in output when splitting the Bluesbucker:

https://youtu.be/IHf81ZovFlY

This doesn’t seem to be in line with what I’ve read about the pickup. Is he splitting to the wrong coil by mistake?

[darkbluemurder]

Looks like he split the wrong coil. Mine is almost as loud split as in series.

Cheers Stephan

[gregr]

I read some replies and the guy said that he split to the screw coil. Is this the correct one?

I’m curious so that I can add that to the comment section in the event that he got it wrong. However, I’m really just bumping this because I changed the topic title.

[darkbluemurder]

Yes, the screw coil is the correct one. The DC resistance should be approx. 6 - 7 kohms. If he measures only 2 - 3 kohms, he got the wrong coil.

Cheers Stephan

[gregr]

Which means the black/white pair need to be connected to the red wire, rather than the green wire which is typically connected to ground. I imagine this problem happens quite a bit since this is normally how people spit a humbucker.  Hopefully the manual is clear about it,

[darkbluemurder]

This is what DiMarzio published for the Bluesbucker: https://d2emr0qhzqfj88.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/diagrams/bluesbucker_0.pdf

Red/Black is the screw coil. If you connect black/white to red (assuming red is connected to hot) you would short the screw coil. If you use red as hot you need to connect black/white to ground.

If you use green as hot (e.g. because the  BB is out of  phase with the other pickup on the guitar and the phase cannot be reversed with that pickup) you need to connect black/white to red, which may not be possible with all wirings. Instead you can also connect black to hot, white to ground and red/green to ground  as well. 

Good luck,
Stephan

[gregr]

Interesting. I certainly would have wired it backwards. Thanks for that.

I take it the screw coil is also north in polarity?

[darkbluemurder]

I would have to check that. All I can say is that I never flipped the magnet in mine.

[gregr]

If it’s south then the wire colors on each bobbin would have to be swapped internally relative to the wind direction in order for the pickup to be in phase with DiMarzio’s standard wire colors.

Either way they do it (polarity or phase) really doesn’t matter, I’m just curious.