FENDERS CRAFTY PICKUP – The DOUBLE TAP HUMBUCKER

Wow, this one is one STRANGE puppy to wire. I’ll break it down. First here’s the schematic from Fender.

Let’s get right down to it. The strange thing is the way the wiring goes. Normally you just ground a few wires and you end up with a split coil.  This won’t measure what you think unless you hook it up this way (without taking it apart or doing what I do below to figure it out).

CRITICAL

The COMMON is the shielded lead. That should be connected to ground, everything is relative to this lead.

• JOIN the Green and Black leads together.
• The White Lead is the switch off lead (It’s the Tap)
• The RED lead is the switch on lead (WITH the GREEN/BLACK grounded)

MEASUREMENTS

Join the Black and Green

• White to Red:  Approx. 500 OHMS
• Black to Red: Approx. 4.5K Ohms
• White and Ground: Approx 8K
• Red and Ground: Approx 8.4K

Now for the basic explanation.

Coil 1: Common and Green

Coil 2: Black, Red and White (the tap)

If you measure from WHITE to RED you’ll only get about 500 Ohms or so and RED to BLACK gives you about 4.4K. If you measure from BLACK to WHITE you’ll get about 3.9K

What’s really clever here is that it lets the humbucker be 8.2K instead of 8.6K and the single coil to be 4.4K instead of 3.8K, in other words, it tames the humbucker and boosts the single coil.

RIGHT ON. VERY CLEVER