Vintage vs. Hi Gain/330 vs. 340

[jaybyrd]

Wooly,

Mark the MD posted the below explanation when I asked a similar question last year. You can also use the search feature to find more previous posts on this subject. Good luck!


Friday, April 27, 2001 - 04:55 pm
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THe third pickup is a quandary in itself.

HOW do you wire it and what do you want to achieve with it?

The 3 pickup guitars that are "Stock" have the middle ganged up with the neck pickup.This gives you the #4 click of a strat switch tone .You also get all three together and then the bridge pickup by itself.

Another way that these guitars get modified to is ;
switch is stock as a two pickup guitar ,the controls stay the same except the 5th knob get changed to the volume control of the middle pickup.That can allow you to have any of the stock sounds plus it gives you the two Strat "out of phase" tones.

One idea that I have played with is this .Adding the third pickup as a 'dummy' coil forever wired into the circuit in series.This coil needs to have the magnet(s) removed so it won't 'see' the strings.This way you retain the single coil tones ,yet the two live/magnet pickups see the strings and the 60cycle hum of the USA is not heard.At least in therory.Now this is not a cure all for noise ...but it would be better than just running straight single coil.At least an option.

R McGuinn uses a third pickup on only a few studio tracks ( My Back Pages ,for instance) but other than that it is a cosmetic feature.He rarely uses it.