changing humbucker to single coil

[ilbianconero]

OK I only wanna do this temporarily.
I DO NOT mean to have a coil split where you have both options of having humbucker and single coil (with push-pull, or toggle ,etc).
I just want to wire my neck humbucker in a way (only temporarily - for a few days perhaps), so that, it becomes a single coil ONLY(eliminating one of the coils completley- eliminating the humbucker option completley).
Is this possible?
If so, there are 4 wires off the humbucker (and 2 are connected together and isolated) and the other 2 are conneted to pots, etc. Do I need to bring them in as well? which ones go where if possible?
thanks

[Grandturk]

You'll need to know the color scheme of the wires. What kind of pickup is it?

[MountainDog]

Take the two wires that you say are connected together but isolated (I take that as meaning the connected ends are taped together and not touching anything else), remove the tape from the end, and solder the 'connected' ends of the 2 wires to ground (the back of the pot). This gives you a coil tap, without doing via a switch, and is what I do to all my neck humbuckers. If you don't like it, just unsolder the wires from the pot and make sure they are still connected and re-tape them.

Also note that on 2-wire humbuckers, the extra 2 wires of a 4-wire humbucker are there, just that they are buried in between the coils. You have to undo the black tape stuff around the pickups and also on most pickups pick out some of the wax potting material. If you work slow and use tweezers, you'll usually find two 1/2" long black wires soldered at the end. Sometimes they put tape on the end, sometimes they just stick those back into the area between the coils. (In some cases, I've found a solid wire, and I had to strip some insulation off and use an ohmmeter to verify I found the wire that is linking the coils) . Also remember there are other wires in there so you've got to take the time to verify what wires are going where). You can either solder the 'joint' of those two wires to the pickup chassis, or solder a new piece of wire to them and run that wire back to the control cavity and solder to ground (this option makes it very easy to return to full humbucker by just unsoldering and taping off that wire). Re-tape the pickup and reinstall and you're good to go.

[Grandturk]

If you follow MountainDog's advice, you need to solder the two connected wires to seperate grounds that are not electrically connected to each other or the rest of the circuit, other wise it won't work. That's why I suggest you find out which wires are which. If you can isolate one coil's wires, you send on to ground and one to the switch and disconnect the other coils wires from the guitar's circuits completely - tape them off.

[ilbianconero]

Thanks guys. That's great.
Just to answer the question above:
It's a duncan sh-4 (the neck we're talking about) and has red&white taped together and isolated, green and bare to pot (& ground hence) and the black one is to the switch.

regards

[Zerberus]

On a Duncan, Green and bare to pot, red and white to switch, black taped off and floating. This is for a temporary installation where you don´t want to go into which coil useds which wires.

If you want the other coil, then solder black to the pot and let green float.

the "More professional" but just as functional ways would be Black to Switch, white and bare to ground, or red to switch , green and bare to ground. this removes teh second coil completely and with it the (miniscule) risk of interference due to the floating coil.

Alternatively, if you still want hum canceling, you can try Parallel wiring, this would be slightly different. Black + red to switch, white/Green/bare to ground.

[ilbianconero]

That's what I needed.
Grandturk, Mountaindog, Zerberus thanks to you all.
cheers