I've always been curious about experimenting with different permutations of the coils in the Gibson sidewinder pickup (the mudbucker). By default, its coils are hardwired in series, and there is only a single output lead (and ground lead) - making this sort of experimentation impossible.
In order to accomplish this, the mudbucker coils have to be separated, and wired up with four output wires - a pair for each coil - making it possible to create different coil combinations using switches in the circuitry.
I had just the bass to try this on - a '69 EB-0 that has a filled p-bass pickup route, a repaired body break at the neck union, and a non-original wiring harness. I have now modded the pickup in this bass and built a new wiring harness to facilitate series/parallel switching of the humbucker coils, and also coil-tap for running it in single-coil mode.
My pickup had a reasonable amount of slack in the wires exiting the coils. Not sure if they are all like that, but this was a welcome suprise and made the job fairly simple. Here's a shot of the pickup once I carefully extracted the wires out from under the coils:
I had to desolder the existing connections and run a four-conductor wire to the pickup. I chose to use some shielded cable that I had handy, and I grounded the shield to the pickup casing. I also ran a wire (not pictured) up to the pickup cover to ground it and keep it from buzzing when touched (I think I need to do that to my EB-3 too - it buzzes every time I touch it). Here are some shots of the new 4-wire mud, before I tucked the extra slack back under the coils:
In order to accomplish all of the switching permutations, I used two push/pull pots wired up in the following configuration:
The volume pot switches between humbucking and single-coil mode, and the tone pot's switch changes the relationship of the pickup coils from series to parallel wiring. This has a marked effect on the impedance and sound of the pickup. In normal series-mode, the pickup measured about 30K. Single-coil mode cuts that in half, and parallel-mode drops the impedance down to about 7.5K.
The most difficult part of this whole thing wasn't splitting the pickup coils - it was fitting those pots in the control cavity. I couldn't get the cover back on because the pots are so tall! I ended up taking out the brass shield insert and sanding down a couple of high spots in the wood. Barely got everything to fit! I probably would not have done that if the bass didn't already have repaired body damage/mods. Here's a shot of the new wiring harness:
So hows it all sound? Well- the differences between the various settings are subtle, but were immediately obvious to me. Since we're only talking about a single pickup, the changes are not as dramatic as say phase reversal between two pickups. The best way I can describe it is that as you drop to single-coil and parallel mode, the sound becomes more clear, articulate, and less "saturated" or "muddy". It still sounds undeniably like a mudbucker in every setting. I made an audio clip to
try and demonstrate the differences:
http://www.hillscloud.com/music/EB0_Modification.mp3This clip just repeats the same passage, iterating thru the following settings:
1. Stock mudbucker w/coils in series
2. Coils in parallel
3. Single coil
4. Single coil w/tone rolled off
5. Stock mud w/tone rolled off a bit
I tried to record that as raw as possible. It's just bass -> Alembic F-2B preamp (set flat) -> computer via M-Audio 1814. You probably need to listen thru phones or some decent monitors to fully appreciate the subtle differences in tone.
Hope this helps to satisfy anyone else's curiousity about this type of modification!
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