Yeah, they sound great in series! I always liked the sound of the Irish Tour in my Strat (HS setup, IT neck, NB bridge, toggle switch, volume pot) but could never get used to single coil hum as even humbuckers are noisy here in the house. I wanted to somewhat reduce hum and get some interesting new sounds at the same time. I'm not picky usually - if it's a great sound, I'll use it, which was a good base for an experiment.
I cut a second hole right next to the neck position so that there's only 1 cm between the two. I did so because I needed place for picking, fingerpicking - a reason why I don't like regular HSS setups. I bought a RWRP Apache at our BK dealer and replaced the IT with it. I wanted something with weak magnets to save some sustain and mix different timbres. The IT got in the middle position. I wired them up for series/parallel switching with a push-pull pot that replaced the regular volume pot. BTW, it was interesting to see that the Apache was wound with a different wire than the IT. The wire of the IT looked dark (plain enamel?), while the Apache had copper-colour wire. Scatter-winding was also visible. 8)
All three positions are perfectly balanced at last! When in series, the IT/Apache combo sounds like a hot and open-sounding neck humbucker but generally tighter, and there's a hint of quack in the sound as the two pups aren't right next to each other. Actually, all three positions are very usable and complement each other well. When in parallel, the combo is lower output and sounds cleaner and more hollow, it will be great when I want to change for silent rythm during vocals. The "all-three-pups-in-parallel" position is one freakin' nice quack sound!!!
I'll take some photos tomorrow as my guitar looks really intimidating now, with the two singles in front... :twisted:
I'm finally sure that after my Artist I've finished my Strat, too. Thanks BKP!!! :D
