Questions about what parallel and series technically are

[clay-man]

So, I've noticed some things.

 

Would it be safe to say, parallel is basically like recording both pickups, then mixing both wave forms 50/50 on eachother?

 

In a sense, I used this to make a brighter sounding tele model without loosing the nice low tonality that the stock pickup position gives. If they're close by eachother, it just sounds like 1 pickup, and not a quacky parallel pickup combination.

 

 

So what technically is series? What is happening within a series wired pickup? What makes it sound fat and humbuckery? What is technically going on to smoothen out the high ends?

[stevekc]

http://www.gmarts.org/index.php?go=241

[clay-man]

I'm getting that series practically doubles the coil length so the resistance is even more, making it sound fatter.

Right?

 

In theory, you can use what I did to further expand how you want a model to sound even if you just want it to sound like 1 pickup.

 

The only time it doesn't work is when parallel pickups are far apart because the drastic difference in tone creates the wide sound that we all know as quack positions.

 

I was annoyed for the longest time that I wanted the Tele to sound brighter without sacrificing the overall tone of the original pickup position.

When you move it down to the bridge, it gets brighter, but it also gets very nasally and gets rid of a lot of the body of the sound.

Putting one on default 1.7 position and one at 1.3 a few DB lower created a really brighter sound while retaining the low-mid tonality of the tele sound, and I'm pleased to say I'm super happy with the Tele bridge setting now. It's super snappy and twangy now.

 

Just wanted to kind of elaborate to help people when messing with workbench.

Sometimes, don't think of it as literal as you want, and think of it in theory of how you could add certain tonality to the sound you have to achieve what you're trying to get.

 

Basically, I didn't need to just use 1 pickup to get a 1 pickup sound, as 2 very close pickups in parallel sound like 1 single coil pickup with a wider/higher frequency range.