Did I Turn my humbucker in to a single coil?

I hope so. I was unhappy with the humbucker sound in the neck of my tele, but couldn't afford to buy a new pickup.

I have a SD '59 SH-1N and I soldered the red and white wires together and then to the switch.
The green and bare wires were wired together to ground.
and I taped off the black wire.

Did I turn this in to a single coil? It sounds that way to me.

any insight?

thanks.

Turn on your amp and tap a polepiece on each coil with a little screwdriver, if both sides are working then there should be a pop when you touch both coils, if only one is working then only one will make the pop. Hope that made sense.

Yes, you are now using one coil.

The SD site has many many wiring diagrams: http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/

You have it set up so you are using the pole coil. To use the screw coil ground the White and have the Black go to Hot.Are you totally against a HB sound for the neck or just how this pickup sounds?Just turning it around in the ring will make it brighter w different harmonic content. Putting the coils in parallel will brighten it and make it more airy like positions 2 and 4 on a Strat.:oops:Eddie in the next post is right I'm wrong about which coil is the screw.It is the Green-Red coil.The pickup coming off ground dominates the sound thats why the HB is done this way.

YES, you are getting just one coil out of the humbucker.

To do it a little more cleanly, if you just wanted to play ONE coil of the pickup, you only need to connect the red lead to the switch, with the green lead on ground - ignore the other two leads (black and white). That would give you the S-D screw coil.

To get the OTHER coil instead, you would connect the white lead to ground and the black lead to the switch. That would give you an S-D slug coil.

A THIRD option would be to play BOTH coils, but parallel, instead of series. I like this option better than just using a single coil on bridge pups. To do that, both the green and white wires would be connected to ground, and the red and black wires would go to the switch. That way, the bridge pickup is still noise canceling, but it's not the fat humbucker tone you get with the coils in series, and it's a more colorful tone than just playing it as a single coil.

FWIW, Gretsch Filtertrons are wired that way, with the coils connected in parallel, instead of in series.

Great info in this thread. Wish they posted it on the SD website...
:roll:

Thanks for everyone's input! The pickup sounds great as a single coil.

A good option is a DPDT on/on/on switch, giving you: series HB/single coil/parallel HB (http://www.1728.com/humbuck5.gif)
Source (http://www.1728.com/guitar.htm)