Coil Split

Guitars that have humbuckers can also be fitted with coil splits. A coil split is when one of the two coils of the humbucker is bypassed. It is subjective whether a coil split humbucker sounds the same as a real single coil but effectively this is what it has become. The coil splitting is achieved with an extra switch on the guitar or via a push pull volume or tone control. Some guitars can be bought with coil splits but any guitar with a humbucker can be retro fitted to do this as well. Coil Splits are frequently wrongly called coil taps. A coil tap is when the pickup can be ‘tapped into’ at a lower number of windings than the pickup might have. For example a pickup may have 10,000 windings of wire in total but the ‘coil tap’ is made at 8000 windings. This produces lower output of the pickup therefore changing the sound produced.