Rabbit Hole #2: Make my own pickups. About $500 for an automatic hand winding station.
Why?
One way to make single-coils hum cancelling is to wind one pickup clockwise with South Poles up,
Then another with North poles up counter-clockwide.
When they are combined, hum is cancelled. Stacked noiseless do this.
But what if you wound 1/2 of a pickup South poles up clockwise, and the other half North poles up counter-clockwise? Also hum-cancelling, but with a more purist tone.
@Lulz4l1f3 NAMMaste my inner guitar mad scientist bows to your inner guitar mad scientist. I asked the why not cool tapping question to myself as a teen not knowing it was a thing. I can’t say it is a very impressive thing (I’m looking at you PRS McCarty pickups). They really should have done unbalanced coils for more top end.
Yeah, coil-splitting on 4-wire pickups produces modest results, and if I remember correctly, PRS does coil-splitting with 3 wires which confused the hell out of me.
@Lulz4l1f3 coil tapping is inserting an output lead somewhere within the full winding of a coil. The PRS McCarty pickups 3rd wire is the tap. They insert it at the halfway point. Coil splitting is shutting off one coil by sending the positive lead to ground.
rabbit hole was escaped when I realized I don't have enough time to do this on a regular basis unless I retire.