Both pickups at once...

[Devon8822]

Has anybody tried wiring your guitar so that both the bridge and neck humbucker operate together... not just coil splitting but the whole thing. I am thinking this will give a really thick, articulate, full sound...?

Also, is it possible to disable your volume knob and just use the pup selector switch as a kill switch... so when its in position 1 or 5 pickups are on but you could disconnect the middle pickup so that when the selector switch is there it doesn't send a signal through... Would this work?

[Foulacy]

this is a standard position on most guitars with just two humbuckers. every les paul has this. my rg2550 has 2 EMG's and the middle position is both pickups. i've never liked it on any guitar i've played.

[djohns74]

Originally Posted by Foulacy

this is a standard position on most guitars with just two humbuckers. every les paul has this. my rg2550 has 2 EMG's and the middle position is both pickups. i've never liked it on any guitar i've played.

Interestingly, neither have I. I love the Ibanez 5-way switch on HH guitars that gives neck in parallel and inner coils, but the middle positions (both on full) is the only one of the five that I'd never consider using. Thick sound, yes. Articulate, not to my ears anyway.

As for the original question though, consider the following. Say you have a standard 5 way switch, you wire the bridge pickup to it's normal position, and the neck to where a middle pickup would normally go. You end up with the following combinations:

1 - No sound
2 - Neck humbucker
3 - Neck humbucker
4 - Both humbuckers
5 - Bridge humbucker

You could also put the neck in its normal place and have position 3 be the one with no sound, but this seems awkward to me. I have tried variations of this though and found that a 5 way blade switch does not, for various reasons, work all that well as a kill switch.

[blackspy]

EBMM EVH/Axis guitars do this with great success, sounds fantastic. Wolfgang's also, the new Wolfgang sounds phenomenal in this position.

Though, it's probably not the greatest position when playing with tons of gain.

[Vim Fuego]

Originally Posted by Foulacy

this is a standard position on most guitars with just two humbuckers. every les paul has this. my rg2550 has 2 EMG's and the middle position is both pickups. i've never liked it on any guitar i've played.

Ah yes, the unusable Les Paul center position.... I quite like it actually!
Jim

[toneboy]

Out of the humbuckers I've tried, the only 2 I like to use the same time are Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAFs (bridge and neck versions). In my Les Pauls, they sound really sweet to me. I need to get a neck model for one of my PGMs to use with the bridge model that's already in it.

[denthevetteman78]

I don't like the sound from the two humbucker at the same time on my Les Paul. I do like to lower the volume on the neck and use the swich as a kill swich to add some effects.

[sniperfrommars1]

You can wire it like that to work as a kill switch. Both pickups on at once? Alot of people will say phase cancelation. I personally think it can sound okay, I like the sound of a single coil in the middle position for clean tones to be honest.