I have split coil on my Les Paul, but really I think the wiring is messed up on it. But what I have noticed is that in the up position on the neck and bridge pickups the tone is much brighter only higher at higher volumes.

I think I accidentally split the coils on the install of my new bridge pickup — it’s a lot thinner sounding than it should be. But since it ends up blending well with the neck pickup, I leave it.

I really like the look of splitting coils using mini-switches, but that usually involves some surgery to the guitar.

I did have a couple guitars with coil splits in the past. They have their own sound, not really the same as, say, the Fender sound.

If you’re asking whether you should do it … I think it’s interesting to do if you only have one guitar, or want to be able to change tone within a song. But otherwise, if you have several guitars, I don’t know if it’s really worth it.

Marty is right in terms of sound.
But it’s such a thing with the sound; one likes it, the other not so much.
It’s best to be able to hear the split pickup to judge if this sound is good. This is only possible with a new purchase. If you want to rebuild your guitar, of course.
But you do not know if your split sound appeals to you. There are corresponding switches to buy. The switch has three positions. Herewith you can make the parallel and series switching.
This is not rocket science; nevertheless an effort.
Ibanez built 58th humbucker and such circuit. Can you listen to YouTube? One thing is for sure, you have a lot of sound variations.
Splitted, your humbucker sounds very thin. Splitted, your humbucker sounds very thin. Go in the direction of Strat. But only in the direction. In parallel, the sound tells me nothing. But in combination with the bridge pickup again interesting.

I have split coil settings on my PRS. I don’t care for them. They don’t really sound like a single coil pickup to me. They just sound like a weak pickup. I like the idea of a coil split, but it just doesn’t work for me.

I have 2 guitars with split coils. A purpose built Benford Guitars double cut with Seymour Duncan P-rails and a Hutchins Venue that has a pair of Sanford Magnetics Model 22 humbucker pickups with the bridge pickup split.

The Venue’s bridge pickup is split using a push pull knob that is also the volume control and the single coil tone is very good. I had the original Artec pickups replaced with the Sanford Magnetics humbuckers. I use the Venue as my Open C tuned slide guitar.

The Benford is probably the most versatile guitar I own in terms of the amount of different tones available . I’ll leave it to you to look up the P-rails complete specs but basically they are a fat p90 and a rail pickup mated together and you can run them as a p90, a rail, or together as a humbucker. You can see a couple of 3way switches on the Benford that control each pickup. They sound great as humbuckers and darn good as p90’s. The neck p-rail is as good as the neck p90. The bridge p-rail is not my cup of tea on its own but it pairs well with whatever I do with the neck pickup. This guitar is in standard or drop D tuning.

Benford double cut. benforguitars.com

Hutchins Venue. (I bought this guitar for about $150 US because Hutchins is my name. Thought it would be a wallhanger. Turns out it’s a great playing guitar and sounds awesome with the upgraded pickups)

I’m not sure I can hear any difference to be honest, then again I am in shock that someone would play Brown sugar on something that isn’t a tele…
Are these split coil things better sounding or different sounding once the volume is turned to ON?…

Billy wrote:

I’m not sure I can hear any difference to be honest, then again I am in shock that someone would play Brown sugar on something that isn’t a tele…
Are these split coil things better sounding or different sounding once the volume is turned to ON?…

I wonder how many of us learned Brown Sugar on acoustics (cause thats what we had). 🙂

Some split coils (Epiphone is an example) seem like a compromise between the 2 pickups. Others are quite articulate between single coil and humbucker.

So my 2010 ’59 reissue Les Paul has split coils in it from the custom shop. It’s a huge difference in sound! Basically makes the Gibson sound like a Strat in my opinion. I rarely use it though. I like a Gibson to sound like a Gibson and a Strat to sound like a Strat haha. Splitting the coils in the LP makes it very bright sounding. I prefer a warmer tone from my Gibsons.

Billy R wrote:

I like a Gibson to sound like a Gibson and a Strat to sound like a Strat haha.

Perfect!

Bridge pickup on my PRS Vela has a coil split. PRS does a thing where they add like 30% of the inactive pickups coils to the split, which is supposed to alleviate the volume loss when splitting. It does do that, there barely is any volume loss. And the splitting gives a brighter, thinner quality to the bridge pick-up. So it sounds different to me, and good, but it doesn’t sound like a single coil pickup (except for the hum). I think there is something that is inevitably different between single coils and split hum buckers. You can’t really shut a passive magnet off, and I think the proximity has an effect, even when the pickup is split.