is parallel useless?

[stonabus]

i dont notice anything but a volume drop. i feel like i wasted my time.

[idsnowdog]

What pickup are you using parallel? Nearly every pickup I like sounds good either way. With parallel it scoops out the mids and you get a cool psuedo acoustic effect. It really comes in handy with neck humbuckers that sound too loud and muddy. It tends to work better with higher output types. I don't like split at all.

[larry_emder]

It should sound different to series.

WHether is it useless or not is upto you.

I dont think it is useless for all pickups

[danglybanger]

parallel sounds telelike to me

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

No more useless than splitting your pickup.

[Evan Skopp]

In one way it's better than splitting your pickup: you retain hum canceling.

[frankfalbo]

I've got it on my Ibanez SC420, simply because the stock 5-way is hardwired for it. I've put PRS pickups in there, and the Vintage Bass neck pickup goes to parallel in position 2. I generally prefer split humbuckers over parallel, but in this guitar I'm stuck with it.

So it's forced me to find uses for it, and I have. It's unique in that there's some inherent quack from running two "single coils" at the same time, but it's much more bland and homogenized than position 2 on a Strat because of the close proximity of the coils.

One of the easiest uses for it is as a rhythm/lead setting for the neck pickup. Assuming you need "neck tone" for your rhythms, you can strum away and then switch to series for your solos, or to jump out in front of the mix for part of the song. When you split the pickup the tone changes drastically, so you have a more deliberate sound change. Parallel offers more tonal familiarity to the series tone, but with some more clarity and definition along with the output drop.

[Brewtone]

I have an old Washburn super strat from the 80's with a single push pull
DPDT volume pot in it and I use this to swtich between series and parallel on a Dimarzio Tone Zone. I've never noticed much if any volume drop in parallel mode. The tone zone in parallel loses alot of it's mud and clears up quite a bit so I find it the easiest way to have two available sounds on this one pickup, one volume knob "practice machine"

[Sludgenutz]

i dont notice anything but a volume drop. i feel like i wasted my time.

Great question and reponses! Just give it more time to sink in, Stonabus. The tonal spectrum is as idsnowdog says...plus, I find the picking hand becomes more relevant to the overall tone such a digging into the strings, and the picking position relative to the saddles.

You gotta love the zero hum!

I have my Epi Iommi, and an added 4P3T switch that allows both humbuckers to be simultaneously switched series/split/parallel. I really like it. It gives me the feeling of a having a three speed transmission on each pickup, tone wise.

The switch (I think Artie Too told me about these):

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/SWT36

The 4 conductor Gibson 490R I had in my Epi LP for a while was sooooo muddy under gain (a well known issue with this pickup), I soldered it in permanently as a parallel humbucker. Otherwise, I would have thrown this pickup out the window.

[Lewguitar]

I think the single coil mode sounds better than the parallel mode...but parallel does give you a single coil-ish tone and it's humcancelling. But the single coil mode has a stronger tone. My guitar has a three way switch for each humbucker that allows series, single or parallel. The parallel setting never gets used...but at least I now know what it sounds like. Lew