How to Wiring and Split A Humbucker Humbucking Hotrail Pickup Guitar

 Hi.. at this article I will show you how I create three different sound with one pickup, how i split my humbucker pickup into three sound or how i split my hotrail pickup into three sound. Lets check it out.

At first, lets take a look on a hotrail or humbucker pickup coil configuration below:

Picture of Hotrail pickup

A humbucker or hotrail pickup consist of two different coil mount together. The start of black cable and end in white, so that the red cable start and end in green. In this pickup we can make 4 kind of basic sound:

(1). If you solder red and white together, then you use green as ground/earth, than you will have black as output/hot output for a humbucking sound, that is so bold and dark. (series connection)

(2). If you use green and white as ground/earth (solder together), and use red and black as hot output (solder together), than you will have humbucker sound. (paralel connection=less power)

(3). Use only white as a ground and black as hot output, you will have one single coil.

(4). Use only green as a ground and red as hot ouput, than you will have a single coil too.

But in my project, i just only make three different sound, that is one humbucker and two single coil. The humbucker I choose is the series one, so i connect red and white together, and use my green as ground/earth, and black as my hot output/main output. I choose series humbucker connection because it is more powerfull.

My electronic parts are:

- a three-way pickup selector switch

- two potentiometer (500K) = one for tone and one for volume

- one capacitor  0,047 uF = for humbucker 

- one capacitor 0,039 uF = for single coil (because i only have this) you can either change it into another value of capacitor for a different sound.

Three way switch explanation:

Picture of three way switch

As you have already known, in three way selector, the output are pin number 4 & 5. 

The if you select bridge position, the pin number 1 and 6 connected.

If you select middle position, the pin number 2 and 7 connected.

If you select neck position, the pin number 3 and 8 connected.

In my split hotrail pickup project, this is my configuration:

- Pin number 5 as output to my volume capacitor. You can choose between pin number 4 or 5. It just the same.

- Bridge position (hotrail humbucker) =  I connect my hot output that is black wire into pin number 1.

- Middle position (single coil) = I connect my red and white wire together into pin number 2. In this case, the white wire will become a single output because it has a black ground. And the red will not affect so much, because it has no ground.

- Neck position (single coil) = I jumper pin number 2 to 3 as a single coil output, but i solder a 0,039uF capacitor on pin number 8, so that i produce different sound.

And this is the picture of my configuration:

Picture of all my wire configuration.

In this case I assume that you've already understood how to solder a capacitor for a tone. If you dont, you can look at this below:

Picture source: https://www.fralinpickups.com/

And this is the result:

Ok, thats all I can explain about how to split a hotrail pickup into three different sound, or how to split humbucker pickup into three different sound, how to split a humbucker pickup, how to split a hotrail pickup into single coil, how to configure a guitar pickup, and also learning how to solder a guitar pickup, how to wiring a guitar pickup. If you wanna know more please follow my IG : @gedeastawan