Danage

No, this is just a straight up normal audio taper pot, no indent, not a stacked pot. I'm calling it a "blend" as it blends in the second coil. There's no attenuation of the first coil. Sorry for the confusion

Big warning to anyone who finds this thread and thinks "I'll do that!". I've had to put the old standard pick back in. Even with the pickup completely decked to the body, the magnet field strength is so strong that I'm getting fret buzz almost everywhere on fretboard. The magnets are pulling the strings down towards it, causing fret buzz. I've switched back to the original pick up and the problem has disappeared... You've been warned! Anyone wanting to juice this pickup... install a steel bass plate or something. Don't put N38s in it!

Quick update... have done the mod. In the end, I set up the blend only for the series configuration. So the pot isn't doing anything when the switch is up in parallel. I just need to move one wire to a different lug on the switch, should I wish to change it... On the bass in question (Warwick Streamer Standard - one of the old single-pickup German made ones), the star of the show is having the blend _almost_ all of the way off, so that a bit of the back coil is being added to the front coil. This stops it getting too thin, in the way that a split humbucker can sometimes be. It works pretty good as a mid-cut. I'm a fan! Possibly the more sensible thing to do is just to do the coil tap via fixed resistor (or internal trim pot?), to allow the desired amount of second coil to bleed in consistently. I think this is how PRS do their coil taps. A word of warning - I only had an audio taper pot with a push-pull. A linear taper would definitely be preferable. Too much of the blend is bunched up at one end of the travel. The parallel option is more different from the single coil sound than my experience has taught me to expect... This could be because the coils in the pickup housing have some distance between them - there's enough space inside the pickup for a third coil between the standard two. So maybe parallel is sounding a bit more different than it usually does to a single coil sound as it is "listening" to a wider stretch of string by more than what a standard humbucker does in parallel.

Never heard of that before, thank you!

Wow, that is one hefty resource, thank you!

@itu similarly, I've been doing them since the 90s. Personally I've found series/parallel to be my favourite. I'm aware of what the outcomes of my choices would be. The question I was posing was whether I had my technical implementation correct or not.

Close, I've clearly explain things badly! The switch would be an DPDT on/on switch, so only two positions, which would be series and parallel. The idea is to get all of the series/split/parallel options, but also with the ability to blend out one coil in the humbucker modes. Also this would allow the use of a push-pull pot. In series the signal flow would be: Coil A > volume control > switch > coil B > volume control > output In parallel the signal flow would be Coil A > volume control > switch > volume control > output Coil B > switch > volume control > output I think I've got it figured out - I could get the additional volume control to work in both series and parallel modes by attaching it to the same lug on the DPDT as where the output of coil A goes. To get it to only make an effect in series mode, I just need to attach it to where that same lug connects to when in series mode. If I have time at the weekend I'll just tack a pot on to my existing series/parallel switch setup and have it dangling out the back of the control cavity to see if it is any use. Danage.

In my head, there is no reason why this shouldn't work, but I thought it'd be a good idea to check with people who probably know better... let's consider the following humbucker wiring: Coil A negative > Ground Coil A positive > volume pot > series/parallel switch > master volume Coil B negative > series/parallel switch > master volume Coil B positive > series/parallel switch > master volume Now, in my head, with the volume pot all the way off, you'd have a single coil sound, regard less of where the switch is. But then you could blend in the second coil in either series or parallel. So you'd get everything that you'd have from a series/split/parallel set up, but even more with the blend... and it could all be done on a single push-pull pot..?

I have got hold of the neodymium magnets, installed them, wired up the pickup to the bass and ran through my bands current set list. Here's what I can advise of: To start with, I should describe what this pickup is like prior to modding, for those who are unaware. It is a pretty typical soapbar sounding thing, if more on the obnoxious rather than smooth sounding side of things. For the design, I'd expect it to have a resonant peak somewhere about 3-5khz, but it also had a prominent lower midrange. However, rather than help solidify the bass frequencies, it was always problematic for me to tame those frequencies to where they were useful and not obtrusive. And to get this out of the way... don't do this at home unless you've got a pickup you're prepared to potentially destroy. Maybe getting some magnets and just slapping them on the bottom of the pickup would give an idea of how a stronger magnets will change the sound, in a non-permanent fashion. If you really love the sound, proceed at your own risk to make the mod permanent. The magnets installed were "N38" grade. What strength that is compared to what is used in a Dingwall pickup, or compared to a standard Ceramic C8, I don't know. But what I can say is that it is a crazy-strong magnet. I had to slide them apart upon arrival as the pull was too strong to pull them apart in opposite directions. I think it's also fair to say that this pickup design is clearly not suited to magnets this strong, as the string pull is tremendous. The pickup was installed into a bass with the following signal path: Pickup > series/parallel switch (set to series) > preamp bypass switch (set to bypass)> volume control > output jack. Initially I set the pickup height to 2.5mm below the bottom of the G string when fretted at the 24th fret. However I soon doubled this, and found no detrimental affects to the tonality. What my ears tell me: -The lower mid hump is gone. -It is still a very mid-forward pickup, but that midrange is now somewhere around 650hz and above. And those frequencies really dominate the sound. It's not a "cocked wah" type sound, the Q is too broad for that. With an amp's EQ flat, and boosting the bass a little bit, it gives a sound that would be good for a bass solo. In terms of the 7 bad system dwarves, we've got a lot of Honky and Barky here. -The 30hz and 12khz sliders on my EQ pedal now sound like they actually do something. There's not a whole lot of audio information to be heard in there, but previously there was none. In short, it's an improvement because the problems it throws up are not as troublesome as the ones it has removed. I find it easier to get the sounds I'm looking for now.

Hi there. It could be the footswitch giving up, or it could be that a coupling capacitor is starting to go leaky and is letting DC current pass through. i.e. the pop that you're hearing is actually DC current going into your amp input, and out the speaker, when it should only get the AC current of your instrument signal. If you stomp the pedal on and off several times in a row, does the click/pop lessen? Is it worse when the pedal has just been powered on, and less noticeable after it's been running for a while? If so, it could be a capacitor. If not, the footswitch could be the culprit.

Cermag LTD will make custom size magnets however you want... so I've ordered a couple of neodymium ones that will fit this pick up... will report back once I've tried those ones...

I'm going to put this here, just for the sake of information should any ever have a desire to do the same thing. I swapped the magnets out on the aforementioned pickup, replacing the ceramic magnets with Alnico 5 to see what the difference is. To summarise, the output drops noticeably, and the main voice of the pickup moves up somewhere around the 1k range (to my ear at least). It starts to sound a bit like a Precision Bass pickup, but with less bottom end. I think a lot of the output in this pickup comes from the strong ceramic magnets, rather than the copper wire. Anyway, he's some pictures of the process should anyone else be mad enough to want to do this. If you are, you'll have to look at bar magnets for 7 string humbucker pickups to find something close to fitting. The original magnets are 67x13x5mm, which seems to be quite non standard. I got hold of a pair of A5 68.5x13x5mm and ground them down.

Got the magnets out 67x13x5mm. Can't find any alnico or ceramic magnets in this sizing commercially. Can find 67x12x5 neodymium... Not what I'm looking for though Anyone know where I can get alnico 2, 3 or 5 in that size? Anyone know why the bobbins would be wrapped in copper foil like this? Only other observation is that one bobbin was wax potted and the other wasn't. Maybe a QC failure that lead it coming to the general market?

Yeah, it's definitely an oddity in the Warwick world. I'm currently in a reggae/ska band so the darker tones from it work well for me, but the general consensus is that it's not a popular pickup. Yep, mine is a German made SSBO too. Trying to find alternative magnets of the same size is proving a struggle.

If anyone is interested, the bar magnet is 67mm long and 5mm wide. Depth still to be uncovered (in all meanings of that word). So although it is a firebird-like construction, the dimensions are way different.