P Bass pickup wiring

[Telesavalis]

Please explain to me the simplicity of series wiring in the P Bass.

[ThreePlyGuy]

http://www.bass-guitar-info.com/pickup_wiring.html

Tele, I know you are already aware of basic coil but viewing side by side always explains things more simple for me. Here is basic J and P, two coils and two coils wired as one and for me details why so many of us enjoy both.
Hope this is what you have in mind?

[Cadfael]

The simplicity is, that Leo Fender wanted to create a humbucker without paying for Gibson's P.A.F. patent ...

TPG's wiring diagram already tells a lot ...

It might be better in comparison to the Gibson PAF ...
One of the two coils is reverse wound and the magnetic field is the other way round.
A PAF produces the other polarity with one large magnet under both coils. In a P-Pickup, the single magnets inside have to show into the opposite direction.

The P bass coils might have been wired parallel ...
But parallel wiring means half impedance (compared to one coil) - and less output.
Serial wiring means double impedance (compared to one coil) - and more output.
Leo Fender could have wound the coils four times more. In the end, it would have ment the same impedance. But then it is more than four times expensive (because the risk of a wire break is much bigger, too). Series wiring means nearly the same material as single coil winding. And the risk of wasting material is even less, because one split coil has less material than for a comparable single coil PU.

Leo Fender also was a friend of single coil sound!
That's very important (and can be proved by his late G&L years).
The Split coil P pickup was a way to produce "hum-bucking" but with only one coil per string (single coil method).

Leo Fender's last pickup construction before his death was the G&L Z-Pickup (for bass and guitar). This is nothing else but a variation of the P-Pickup.

The Mustang bass pickup (Leo's last pickup for Fender) also proves, that Leo Fender chose the split coil pickup as his favourite method of "picking up" the sound of a (bass) instrument.

It is "single coil humbucking" ...