I recently had a new client bring me an Epiphone Les Paul Standard that he wanted some wiring work done to. He replaced the stock pickups with a set of Seymour Duncan Whole Lotta Humbucker pickups, which have 4 conductor lead wires. So he wanted me to install a push/pull volume pot for each pickup, so he could turn off one coil in each pickup, called coil splitting, which would produce a true single coil tone.

But I persuaded him as to the advantages of series/parallel switching rather than coil splitting since parallel mode produces a tone very similar to single coils. But the key advantage is that, even in parallel mode, the pickup is still humbucking, which is especially critical if you play any gigs in places with poor wiring, neon lights, anything that produces extraneous 60 cycle hum noise. While I was at it, I also wired the new pots so that they would have truly independent volume control over each pickup. that way, if the toggle switch is in the center, and both pickups are on, the sound doesn't go dead if you roll off one volume as is the case with traditional Les Paul style wiring. I also rewired the tone pots using my favorite way, which is the classic 50's Gibson style wiring, which really helps maintain the highs when rolling off the volume pot. So I decided to shoot this video to address the differences between series/parallel vs. coil splitting, and even demonstrated what true single coil pickups sound like, using a guitar of similar construction to this Les Paul, but which is loaded with only single coil pickups. I hope you find this video to be informative. If you would like additional info about lutherie services at: D Guitars Miami LLC, please call: 305-896-1811. Thanks for watching. Enjoy.