Hc3+?

[turbodogfish]

hi, all - new TAG owner here. it's a koa on swamp ash classic s. i got the guitar second hand.

my question is about how the HC3+ is supposed to sound - is it supposed to be kinda dark and almost muted? when i first restrung it after getting it home, i kept reaching for the tone knob because i thought it was rolled back. it sounds glorious with gain, but clean it seems unusually dark compared to my other humbucker guitars.

i disconnected the tone control (never use it) and that helped a little bit. i even tried rewiring it parallel instead of series but i must have done something wrong because it hummed like crazy, even though both coils were on. i never even strung it up after wiring it parallel because i couldn't get the hum to go away.

anyway - is the hc3+ dark by nature? do i just need a swap out?

[tom]

it's hot, but it shouldn't be overly dark. when you wired it up parallel, did you connect green and black to ground, and red and white to hot? if so, maybe you have a bad coil. we had some troubles with the early HC's that we have solved. if when you're looking at the bottom of the pickup, can you see the 12 pole pieces, or is the bottom solid black? if you have a meter, read between green and red, then black and white. they should read the same give or take 20 ohms or so. if one is reading open, you have a dead coil and we'll need to replace it.
let me know what you find.

tom

[turbodogfish]

Thanks a lot Tom! When I went parallel I just swapped the position of the back and white, meaning I connected green and black to the split switch, the white to ground and red left alone.

I dont think I could see all the polepieces, going by memory. I am pretty sure it was all black. I will try to get it opened up later and test the coils and report back. Thanks a lot for the help.

[turbodogfish]

Well I was wrong, I can see all the pole pieces. And I tested the coils and both read 8.25 or so. I guess its just the voicing of the pickup?

[Pietro]

For some of us... anything with a 3+ at the end just will not work. I know that's true for me. Maybe you just need something different.

[tom]

Shaping black and white would just put the coils out of phase and stop the humcancelling.
If you're used to paf style pickups pietro is probably right. You're hearing just about the hottest thing we do. If you want to send it in we could exchange it for something more up your alley.

[turbodogfish]

oh, duh - so I'm supposed to twist the red and white together and send that to hot? i'm a dummy...

i really appreciate the offer, tom - let me have a run at doing the parallel thing the right way and then if that doesn't do it, i'll get back in touch.

anybody have an idea on what to expect from this hot pickup in parallel mode?

[tom]

everyones color code is different, so you're not a dummy.

twist red and white together for hot, twist black and green for ground.
if you have a splitter, it will short out the guitar when split.

[turbodogfish]

thanks - how would i do it if i wanted to preserve the splitter? or is that not possible?