I split my Benedetto B7 pickup - HB vs SC comparison

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I put a Benedetto B7 in my Ibanez AF207 last year, wired as a HB - and I love it. But I rediscovered a new push-pull 500k pot in my parts bin yesterday, so I decided to install it as a coil splitter. And here's a quick comparison of the same tune through the same mic'ed amp (Blu 6) with no change in settings. The guitar's volume pot is at about 85%, the tone pot is in the middle, the amp's EQ is flat across the board, and the tweeter is off. The output from the SC is a bit lower than it is from the full Monty, but it's not as much lower as I'd expected. I normalized the two tracks to the same reference and plotted a spectrum for each. As you can see, the bottom's almost exactly the same on both - and it sounds about the same. But above 1500 Hz, there's an average of about 6 dB more at the same mean output level - at some frequencies above 3k, there's a 12 dB difference. And there are no dramatic spikes at any frequency in the HB spectrum, but there are several above 2k in the SC's output.

HB spectrum:


SC spectrum:


Here are the two sound files:

HB:

SC:

I used it on last night's trio gig, and the first thing that hit me was how much noisier the SC is than the HB configuration. The club is next to a Septa regional rail line, and the overhead wires are carrying 12,000 VAC (according to the Philadelphia Inquirer). There's also a cell tower directly behind the building. So the stage is bathed in electrical noise and RFI, not to mention whatever's being radiated at us by the banks of stage lighting. Through all of this, the B7 is close to silent as a HB, although an occasional spurt of cell tower activity does cause a faint and intermittent static-y background noise that's also audible through the active EMG in my LP, the KA HW HB in my Eastman Elite, and the Lace Alumibuckers in my Tele 7. But when switched to SC, the B7 gets a lot noisier. It's not too noisy to play, and it doesn't compare to the classic "sound of Fender". But it's definitely there between tunes. OTOH, at home it's completely silent in either mode with the volume cranked.

The SC mode is noticeably more responsive to the tone pot on the guitar than the HB mode - the effect is proportional to frequency and only becomes really noticeable from the upper midrange. With the tone pot fully up, the tone is much brighter in SC than it is in HB - it's almost Fenderlike. With the tone pot backed off to halfway or below, the high end is tame. And regardless of settings, the bottom has the same basic character in SC and HB modes. The treble boost is also more noticeable with a pick than with fingerstyle (which is how I played ATTYA above). With the tone pot about halfway up and the volume pot rolled back to about 2/3, the tone is great for pretending to be Freddie Green. It's crisp and tight - here's a verse from last night:



I'm glad I tried this, and it's going to stay. Comping with a HB can get a bit heavy, and the SC mode lightens it up just enough. It also adds a funkier flavor for fusion and blues. If you have HBs that came wired for coil splitting, consider adding a switch or two and splitting one or both. If you've found yourself thinking that your tone was too fat for a situation, you may be pleasantly surprised. I think it's most helpful for single pickup archtops - it lets you have HB and SC tones, adds a bit of acoustic tone, lightens up the bottom, and gives you that bridge pickup you always wanted .

[jazzkritter]

Never …. when I worked at 36 & Market the trolley overheads were perfectly aligned to our desktops. You very quickly learned to save everything you were working on in timing with the trolley schedules!
Minimum effect was some cool swirling patterns on the (LED) monitors, but crashes were frequent.
jk

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Never …. when I worked at 36 & Market the trolley overheads were perfectly aligned to our desktops. You very quickly learned to save everything you were working on in timing with the trolley schedules!
Minimum effect was some cool swirling patterns on the (LED) monitors, but crashes were frequent.
jk

The problem with cell towers is that somebody’s always making a call! I’m trying to convince the club owner to invest in a cell phone jammer, so we can use SC pickups with impunity. There’s a lot more RFI in the air today than there was when humbuckers were a gleam in Seth Lover’s eye.

[John A.]

Wait, do you seriously expect us to believe single coil pickups are noisier than humbuckers?! No way!

[Gitterbug]

I've got an early Savannah-made Benedetto Bravo, with A-6 and the coil split option. Gets too little play time because I prefer a cheaper Ibanez Afj-91 for regular gigs and my ES-175 VOS 1959 for looking/sounding right. My first instinct with the Bravo: HB for lead/solo, SC for comping! That feature was discontinued by Benedetto for some reason. Never had noise issues in the SC mode, but electric weather is apparently less demanding around places where I play.

[Spook410]

Cool stuff. Thanks for taking the trouble to do all of this.

One of my favorite pickups is the P-Rail by Seymour Duncan. An actually nuisance to get soldered up with push pull's but great fun. All of the configurations, parallel HB, serial HB, single coil, and P90 are musically useful and each setting compares quite well to dedicated models of that type. Which is surprising. Would be great in an ES175. But only if I can pay someone to do the wiring.

[sm80808]

Have you tried series/parallel switching? I wonder what the response plot would look like.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Have you tried series/parallel switching? I wonder what the response plot would look like.

That’s not an option on these. It’s a 3 conductor wire - black is full output, bare is ground, and white is the coil split. Grounding the white shorts one of the coils, leaving only 1 active.

[0zoro]

Very nice comparison never, both sounded good! I think I lean toward the sc though both tones have their spot in time.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Very nice comparison never, both sounded good! I think I lean toward the sc though both tones have their spot in time.

There's a pretty wide range of tones available now - the coil split really extends the upward range of the tone pot. The HB mode goes from thunky with the tone pot low to woody with it full on, and the SC mode goes from more of a woody acoustic-y character with tone pot low to a slightly fat strat-like bridge tone with the tone pot up. I still prefer the HB with treble rolled off a bit for accompanying vocalists alone, for straight ahead jazz, and for most solo playing. But playing with a bass, I really like the SC mode with treble rolled off a bit. I can even use the extended range of the 7th string when playing with a bass, and the two of us are clearly articulated individually as well as integrated. We sound like a wide open chord from one instrument.