This collects all Tutorials on Humbucking pairs under one menu heading, including:
Wiring All-Humbucking Single-Coil Pickup Pairs – Excerpts of Figures 23-26 and the Specification from the original Patent 9,401,134 describing humbucking pairs and switching.
Paul Reed Smith Guitars 513 ™ model pickup switching – General principles of humbucking pairs – A few preliminary notes on tonal effects.
Notes on Humbucking Pair Placement – Shows 3 different pole configurations for 4 pickups & describes some of the likely differences in effects for 12 different possible humbucking pairs; analyzes the 4-pickup Fender Marauder(tm), with many more choices of combinations (81) and discusses why that may have caused the Marauder to fail in the market.
An All-Humbucking 5-Way Superswitch Circuit – Discusses with diagrams and photos how to wire a 5-way superswitch into a 3-coil Strat to get all five outputs humbucking, including serial, parallel, in-phase and contra-phase connections, instead of just 2.
HB Supersw Circuit for 3 P/U w/ Odd Pole at Neck – Shows how to design and draw switching and soldering diagrams for two versions of a 5-way superswitch circuit for a 3-coil guitar, with the odd pole in the neck position instead of the middle.
On Changing the Personality of a Guitar – Part 1 – Excerpts from Patent 9,401,134 showing drawings and specifications for a means of changing the personality of a guitar by plugging in different pole configurations, and compensating with a cross-connection circuit between the pickups and switching, to put the humbucking pair (or quad) in a particular order, such as from warm to bright.
On Changing the Personality of a Guitar – Part 2 – Shows how the math works to determine just how many different pole configurations (personalities) and humbucking pair tones (timbres) you can get for K pickups, using examples of K = 2, 3, 4, & 5. For K number of pickups = 2, 3, 4, 5, you can get 2^(K-1) = 2, 4, 8, 16 different kinds of tonally separate pole configurations (or personalities), K*(K-1) = 2, 6, 12, 20 different humbucking pair tones for each personality, and 2*K*(K-1) = 4, 12, 24, 40 different humbucking pair tones for all the personalities together. It implies that any K number of different personalities may produce all 2*K*(K-1) different tones.
Provisional Patent Application Filed for Humbucking Quads – Filed Aug 6, 2016. Demonstrates a surprising number of possible tone connections. For example, 20 for just two dual-coil humbucking pickups, when most 2-humbucker guitars have a 3-way switch.
General Equations for Combinations of Humbucking Pairs – Includes formulas for: Unique combinations of KK dual-coil humbucking pickups taken MM at a time, NKK,MM, and Unique combinations of K match single-coil pickups taken M pairs at a time, SNK,M. Combinations of pickups don’t tell you how to connect them together. They only tell you how many you have to work with.
Applying HB Pairs Analysis to the Paul Reed Smith 513 Guitar – How many humbucking pair tonal outputs are possible with a single coil and two humbuckers? 16
How Many Useful Outputs from Five Coils? – How many humbucking pairs and quads are possible using 5 singe-coil pickups?
Applying HB Pairs Analysis to the Music-Man St. Vincent Guitar – How many humbucking pair tonal outputs are possible with three humbuckers? 18
Rewiring Humbucking Pickups to Four Output Wires – Proposed standard for wiring humbucking pickups and tutorial on rewiring method
Preliminary Results of Patent Pending 20-way Dual Humbucker Switching – Spectral analysis of dual-humbucker guitar, with two Hofner-style mini humbuckers and strings strummed over six frets, shows 17 distinct tones out of 20 possible. Shows much wider relative tonal range and finer tonal distinctions than equivalent standard 3-way switches (using the same pickups).
Second Patent Filed: Combinations of Pickups with Potentially Unique Tones – Patent filed June 7, 2017 developing the math and circuit topologies to show how many different tones are possible from 1 to 8 single-coil pickups (Table 1), 1 to 4 humbuckers in humbucking arrangements (Table 2), and 1 to 8 matched single-coil pickups in humbucking pairs, quads, hexes and octets (Table 3).