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I made a screen-grab from the 'It'll Be Me Babe' promo video, showing Hank's black Strat with the Humbuckers. Thought it might be of some interest...

Thanks Chris

Is it just me, but I find that using humbuckers never gives the same sort of control of guitar volume and tone as single coils.

I've tried using one or more h/b pickup guitars for live work, but it seems that when you lower the guitar volume, you lose tone and the sound is muffled and muddy. Also, there seems to be little or no decent tonal variation when the tone control is used- it's either normal h/b treble tone or mud...

I know this doesn't matter if the style of music just requires that full on overdriven type sound, but for say, Shads material, if using a h/b pickup, there's no fine control going from rhythm level to lead volume level, or tone control.

I've also tried coil tapped h/b, but they buzz anyway in single coil mode!

Maybe that's why Hank went back to a regular 3 single coil Strat?

I have a home built strat which has a Seymour Duncan Little 59 for strat humbucker on bridge and I wired it to the lower tone pot so as to give an PU that goes between single coil and humbucking and anywhere in between. The tone pot is 500k and also got a switch to bring the bridge in giving a 7 sound + strat by varying the bridge voice.

I was at first wondering if it would really work but I have taken it to the club several times and played the usual bridge tunes and gets pretty close overall. Maybe a tad more bottom end than a regular single coil but workable.

I think humbuckers and indeed single coil PUs can benefit from the small bleed cap/resistor mod across the volume pot to stop any darkening of tone when turning the volume pot down.

I do prefer the single coils though overall but just wanted something a little different on my self built job.

As soon as you put humbuckers on a strat it stops being a strat.
I've had em and I've also wired the single coil pick-ups in series to see what happens.
It just sounded sort of muddy.
Now humbuckers on mahogany............ there's a sound.

cockroach wrote:Is it just me, but I find that using humbuckers never gives the same sort of control of guitar volume and tone as single coils.

I've tried using one or more h/b pickup guitars for live work, but it seems that when you lower the guitar volume, you lose tone and the sound is muffled and muddy. Also, there seems to be little or no decent tonal variation when the tone control is used- it's either normal h/b treble tone or mud...

I know this doesn't matter if the style of music just requires that full on overdriven type sound, but for say, Shads material, if using a h/b pickup, there's no fine control going from rhythm level to lead volume level, or tone control.

I've also tried coil tapped h/b, but they buzz anyway in single coil mode!

Maybe that's why Hank went back to a regular 3 single coil Strat?

The symptoms you describe are the result of a mismatch between the pickups and the pots... Even some guitars supplied with humbuckers exhibit it... But, for example, the humble Yamaha Pacifical 611 with Seymour Duncan's is perfectly specified. A great guitar...

Has anyone else noticed that the neck pickup is rotated through 180 degrees to the usual bringing the pole pieces closer to the bridge instead of the neck. I wonder if this was a deliberate act to try and make the HB more trebly ( which probably wouldn't work well) or to emulate the Peter Green Les Paul mistake that resulted in another "that sound" holy grail tone.
We can't see the Bridge pickup here I wonder if that was altered.
By the way I just started using an American Vintage Re Issue Thinline Telecaster live and it has no muddiness at all.
It's going to have a Multibender bridge soon though. As soon as I can bear to drill holes in it.

Howard

I have a Strat with two humbeckers and have no such problems a described above. I guess it's what David suggested, a mismatch of pots & pickups.

Established1958 wrote:Has anyone else noticed that the neck pickup is rotated through 180 degrees to the usual bringing the pole pieces closer to the bridge instead of the neck. I wonder if this was a deliberate act to try and make the HB more trebly ( which probably wouldn't work well) or to emulate the Peter Green Les Paul mistake that resulted in another "that sound" holy grail tone.

I think it's much simpler than that.

When Hank had that Gibson (neck) humbucker fitted to the guitar (by Sam Li in Gerrard Street), it was originally in the bridge position, and it made sense to have the bridge-position pickup (with the embossed Gibson name the right way round when fitted in the bridge position). Later, Hank had Sam move the Gibson p/u to the neck position and it made sense to keep it the same way up, so that the Gibson name could be read in the normal way.

That's all (and I bet I'm right).

Established1958 wrote:We can't see the Bridge pickup here I wonder if that was altered.
Howard

It was.

As I'm sure you know, it was a Fender Wide-Range Humbucker.

Hank had it wired to a small switch which allowed the second coil to be cut out for a single-coil sound.

See:

JN