placing pickups right next to each other?

kind of a physics question i guess, but ear perception is important too.

is there any negative effect on function or tone if two pickups are placed right next to each other on the body? i mean literally touching....

i'm considering a humbucker/single combo for my current build but i only want the pickup(s) to occupy a minimal space in the middle position.

any of you electro/tone savvy mavens have ideas on the topic...

i'm building the next "dream guitar" that i hope will have a minimalist look but still be able to deliver at least two very different sounds: classic single and classic bucker tones...

I hope that works! would love to have such a thing but for the neck pu on a Tele.
good luck and keep us posted!

You may get some phase cancellation issues from the magnetic fields overlapping and interfering.

I tried this, but ended up with them sharing a baseplate to work - the tone is definitely affected even when split and used as one single.

I think Seth Lover tried putting two single coils next to each other and had good results.....

Seriously, though, I doubt there will be any problems - look at Gibson's "custom" 3-pickup guitars over the years - that's three pickups all jammed in there right next to each other without issues.

I have a Music Man Steve Morse model with a single coil right next to the bridge humbucker, seems to work fine. :)

If you put 2 RWRP Strat p/ups touching you get mud. My guess is because the field doesn't go thru 1/2 their coils. W 2 of the Same pole touching is ok , tho it sounds somewhat different than no neighbor. W HBs I think either way is ok, unless my memory is wrong, tho again the sound changes to whatever degree. I have a uniroute guitar I use for p/up tests and thats my experience.

You sure about that Tele? If you hooked them in series, I can understand that. You'd end up with ~5.?H HB, which is like a fat PAF with even less mids, or something like that. A low capacitance cable might do the trick for something like that, but there is a reason the coils in series HB's are usually short and fat. It may be something with the design of your average Strat PUP's, but like a Strat PUP, the poles are the magnets in a Wilde L600 HB. It's RWRP and full and clear as a bell, and it used to be available up to 6.2H. Maybe the coils need to be a certain dimension to avoid mud at that inductance?

It's a different beast by design, but I have a RWRP 4H Wilde L200SL, and a 3.6H Wilde L280SL abutting. They sound great individually and in parallel. Never tried series. It might be muddy that way, but I think it would just be darker and louder.

http://www.robbie-robertson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/RI_9854-e1337032849196-682x1024.jpg

How about just one of these bad boys ?

You sure about that Tele? If you hooked them in series, I can understand that. You'd end up with ~5.?H HB, which is like a fat PAF with even less mids, or something like that. A low capacitance cable might do the trick for something like that, but there is a reason the coils in series HB's are usually short and fat. It may be something with the design of your average Strat PUP's, but like a Strat PUP, the poles are the magnets in a Wilde L600 HB. It's RWRP and full and clear as a bell, and it used to be available up to 6.2H. Maybe the coils need to be a certain dimension to avoid mud at that inductance?

It's a different beast by design, but I have a RWRP 4H Wilde L200SL, and a 3.6H Wilde L280SL abutting. They sound great individually and in parallel. Never tried series. It might be muddy that way, but I think it would just be darker and louder. When I was experimenting w RWRP and same pole/wind Strats I had them in parallel. HBs are different enough in both coil shape and pole pieces rather than magnets, so that they use and/or modify the effect so they have a similar sound, but avoid mud. Since there are now twin single coil HBs you can get around any negative effects designing for touching coils from the git go. Strat p/ups just get muddy since they were never going to be used next to each other.

thanks, waylonfan....i tried one and it didn't deliver the strat tone it seems to imply.

Great looking guitar.... for a strat.... :p j/k

what singles are sided up and do you have any videos of it?

That Robbie Robertson Strat (http://www.robbie-robertson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/RI_9854-e1337032849196-682x1024.jpg) with the Wonderbar tremolo looks almost Steam Punk. :shock:

Yep, Robbie's. I like the burst one:
http://www.lilypix.com/photos/data/71ad16ad2c4d81f348082ff6c4b20768/2344_p51890.jpg

Nice picture, fezz! Lucky guy gets to play with Joni. Think those were standard Strat PUP's. Were they RWRP?

When I talked to Robbie about it (I worked on the Raging Bull ST Album), he said they were wired in series, with a three way switch like a tele. That's about all I could get out of him, cuz he's kinda ADD.:lol:

I was web reading Duncan did the set up. Unless he reversed the magnet pole on one , that was before RWRP I think. In series w 1 RWRP it would be pretty dark even at the bridge. Same pole in series touching sounds similar to series on a normal Strat w the obvious change in sound from them being so close.

A humbucker is two single-coils together, one of them has the magnets reversed, the coils are the same. The "reverse-wind" (RW) is simply reversing the hot and cold wires

So you should be able to put three coils together using magnets NSN or SNS. The effect should be semi hum-cancelling, Quite how you wire them up, in phase or out of phase, is up to you.

I put two strat coils next to each other in my first "Coyote Dancer" configuration in '09. Here's a link with more info and pics; http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/non-fender-s-type-guitar-forum/2218-coyote-dancer-original-strat-mod-slantbucker.html

It's essentially wired like a two pup axe with a five position switch to get either neck or 'slantbucker' alone or both in series, parallel or series-out-of-phase. A three position mini toggle switches the slantbucker from series to parallel or single (split) for a total of 13 different combinations.

As far as the two singles of the slantbucker 'playing nice' in such close proximity, there seems to be no problem that I or any of the many guitar players that have tried it so far can hear. As would be expected, the series and parallel positions are completely hum cancelling. The tone is very 'fender', not at all like a standard humbucker. It's such a good sound that I'm mystified by the small number of guitars that have been built this way.

My most recent CD build uses an unbalanced 'slantbucker' created by pairing a fat pole A2 GFS vintage tele coil (6.7k) with a vintage A5 (5.5k) GFS strat coil. This guitar has the same basic problem as the first CDancer; once it's in the hands of a good player you're not getting it back!

It wouldn't be too surprising that two abutting Fender SC's would sound very Fendery. It's highly likely that the interaction between the fields may reduce the bass and/or cancel the fundamental to some extent, while the same shouldn't occur if they are RWRP. The mud with RWRP could just come from the darker sound of the fuller bass/fundamental in series, and using a high capacitance cable. There also could be a coil phase alignment issue when abutted, that is by chance somewhat abetted when the poles are the same. There's really no way to tell unless you try it.