A lot sound DIFFERENT when split, and some sound better than others, but if you really want single-coil Strat sound, use a SC. None of the splittable pups I’ve had, have sounded “just like” singles. Stacked pickups just don’t sound as good (to me!) as side-by-side pups do, especially if you want to split them-stacks have a real volume drop off problem that side by sides don’t seem to.
And the Tele shaped one gave me the same “thing” the full size bucker had. I pulled the JB out and tried a couple different things until I hit upon the Tone Zone, which I really liked. (I must be the only person who doesn’t like SD’s JB pickups. I know you asked about SD pups, and any of their stuff should work well, I just have more experience with Dimarzio pups. I’ve had Strats with full size TZ bridge pups, and the TZ for Tele sounds just like the bigger pups. I have a Tele with a Dimarzio Tone Zone Tele-shaped bridge pickup. If you're going to lean on it, you might as well check out what the pickups can do. Golden Age Humbucker Wiring Diagrams Stewmac. But the CV is a worthy axe suited for hard work and gigs.
Bottom line - you're going to have to try some out in your guitar with your amp to really hear if it's what you're after. You may not get exactly the same tone youd get out of a humbucker, but a great deal of the difference would be a result of the positioning of the two single coils. A lot depends upon the output of the individual pickups, but youll be right in the ballpark. There are a lot of players on this forum that have experimented with stacked coil and split rail pickups. Two single coils can give you very close to the output of a standard humbucker. both of them give me all of the hair I want in the sound but the DiMarzio actually gives me more of that Tele squeal when I split it with the original Bill Lawrence single coil in the neck. I'd have to say that out of the two of these bridge pickups that the DiMarzio sounds way more like a Tele than the Duncan. I like these because both coils are right under the strings and when you have the guitar wired for coil splits with other pickups on the guitar you can hear all the coils equally. These are clean, sound like a Tele ought to, and no hum at all.įor single coil size humbuckers I actually like the versatility of the split rail designs - I've got a DiMarzio DP 189 in the bridge position on one Tele and a Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge on another. I've also used Fender's Noiseless pickups which are are also stacked humbuckers - the top coil is the bigger one, the bottom one is smaller and there for hum cancelling only. There are several wiring diagrams on Duncan's web site for the vintage stack and hot stack pickups. You can split the coils for a single coil, similar tone, but not as loud. This combination gave me good Tele sound. Seymour Duncan's Hot Stacks and Vintage Stacks are a drop in, about 10k for the Hot Stack bridge, about 7k for the Vintage Stack neck. I don't have a CV but I have used stacked and dual rails humbuckers.