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Well, I've been winding pickups for years, but since you probably
won't believe me, here is the definition of coil taps from the pickup
glossary located at:
"Coil Tap - traditionally a way of dividing the coils of a humbucker
to produce a single coil sound, however, coil tapping can be true coil
tapping whereby the windings of a coil are interrupted during winding
and a lead attached before the windings are then finished thus in
effect on one bobbin you would have two coils, one wound on top of the
other. These two coils will not be humbucking as they will be be in
the same magnetic field. Coil tapping can also be used for making
pickups out of phase, and for series/ parallel switching."
Coil tapping is an electronic techique originally used in building
radio tuners, that was the inspiration for the pickup winding method.
There are two ways of accomplishing this. One is to wrap multiple
coils, each with their own lead, the other is to periodically bring a
lead out from a single coil after so many windings.
--- In , "Brian Neal" <bneal@i...> wrote:
> > I have had several coil tapped guitars. Basically, two wires are
> > wrapped around the magnetic posts, one less wraps than the other. This
> > basically gives two different impedances for the pickup. It's an
> > attempt to add a single coil type of tone to a humbucker.
>
> Coil tapping is where you flip a switch and voila, one of the coils
on the
> humbucker is shorted to ground, thus giving you a true single coil
pickup.
>
> BN
