Using the tone control to split the coil?

[OldGuitarPlayer]

Year ago I had a two pickup guitar that had a single coil pickup at the neck & a Dimarzio humbucker at the bridge. It only had one volume and tone control. Instead of using a "push pull" pot, my guitar tech at the time wired the humbucker so that when the tone control was on 10 it would be in single coil mode (splitting the coil) and when the tone was at 8 both coils would be active. Is this possible with a Les Paul type guitar with two Vols and two Tone controls? I suppose I'd need a 4 wire humbucker to do this?

 

[garybaldy]

I have a Fenix LPC copy with a SD Jazz in the neck and an Irongear Hotslag in the neck. Both have 4 wires. Owing to broken pots I ended up with a single vol for both pups (the 'neck' vol). The bridge tone knob is still the bridge tone but with a push pull for splitting bridge. The neck tone knob is now a gradual split for the neck pup. ( I always kept the neck tone on 10 anyway so didn't need it).
It works really well.

 

[Hoojaah]

Its Peavey T 60 wiring

 

[johnh]

Year ago I had a two pickup guitar that had a single coil pickup at the neck & a Dimarzio humbucker at the bridge. It only had one volume and tone control. Instead of using a "push pull" pot, my guitar tech at the time wired the humbucker so that when the tone control was on 10 it would be in single coil mode (splitting the coil) and when the tone was at 8 both coils would be active. Is this possible with a Les Paul type guitar with two Vols and two Tone controls? I suppose I'd need a 4 wire humbucker to do this?

Yes you can, I have had that system on my LP for several years.

This was my first version:

The yellow cap is an extra, so it doesn't completely bypass the bridge pickup but keeps some of its bass, making a better meatier single coil tone. For a full split, change it to a plain wire. These days, I like a smaller cap there, and I have 0.047uF = 47nF currently.

The diagram is based around my '91 Studio, which has the cavity back plate and wiring points, but I hope you can see how it could be made with more normal wiring. Colours are based on two similar Seymour Duncans, and they split to different coils so you can have a somewhat hum-cancelling combo if you split both.

The effect is, tone at 10 is max split, and it quickly drops off to full humbucker, audibly before it gets down to 9. then from 9 down to 0 you have humbucker with tone rolled off.

Extended version

I also have a slightly different wiring version, written up on Guitarnuts2. that one does not have the back-plate connections and the cavity is more based on a modern LP (pre pcb obviously). The difference is, I added more to this, with extra switching up behind the toggle switch to do out of phase and series. But ignoring that, the cavity can be wired to the switch normally. It also has treble bleed circuits. Best to read about it. I cant post links from GN2 here (they are too long), but Google with:

"Two Humbuckers and an LP - modular wiring design"

This is the main diagram from that thread - ignore the schematic at the top if you wish to:

 

[OldGuitarPlayer]

Awesome! Thanks for the help & the diagrams!