What is Coil Tapping?
There are basically two types of guitar pickups: the Single Coil and the Double Coil a.k.a. the Humbucker. One could argue that the Single Coil pickup is best represented by the Fender Stratocaster and the Humbucker pickup by the Gibson Les Paul. Traditionally, Single Coil pickups produce a hum (electronic noise) when plugged into an amplifier. Their tone is (generally speaking) thinner than a Humbucker. Humbuckers have a full, fat tone and produce no hum when plugged into an amp. Humbuckers are well suited to heavy, distorted sound because of their superior output and hum canceling characteristics. The Humbucker (Double Coil) pickup was created when someone, somewhere, sometime, discovered that when you place two Single Coil pickups next to each other, the hum cancels out, hence the name Hum-bucker. Each of these two styles of pickup has distinct tonal qualities that make it attractive, and each is available in wide output ranges. Coil Tapping allows you to have the higher output Humb
