• Great sounds but tricky to install and a bit flimsy.

  

  As reviewed by Lee Batchelder on 9/5/2011

  I got a pair of these to put on my 2003 Gibson Les Paul Classic. I was attracted to them for 2 reasons. #1 the functionality (ability to access each coil individually) and #2 I wouldn't have to make mods to my guitar and I could put it back to original if I ever needed to. First let me say, if you intend to use the stock pickups on a Gibson, don't do it. My guitar is equipped with stock 496r and 500t pickups. If you were to buy these aftermarket, they would come with 4 wired leads attached BUT installed on a stock guitar, they come with a 2 wire lead. I don't know why Gibson does this, it's almost like the don't want you to tinker with your wiring. The only way to make these pickups work is to unwrap the tape on the coils and fish out the leads to each coil. That is an easy job to screw up and you can easily damage the pickup beyond repair. After I managed to perform surgery on my pickups and finally got the 4 wires I needed attached to the rings I ran into another small problem. The rings were scrunched up when I mounted them onto my guitar. They looked like they were squeezed in the middle. I took them back out and opened up the mounting holes a little bit and reattached them and that seemed to do the trick. Once I finally had them installed and looking good I ran into another problem. My pick guard wouldn't fit back on unless I made some more clearance in it to allow a bit more room for the new rings. A few minutes with a file solved this but it was just another thing about installing these that didn't go as easy as I had hoped. All in all, the installation took a good 6 hours, I was expecting maybe an hour or two. It was kind of like remodeling an old house, unexpected difficulties around every turn. After the rather painful installation was finished I have to say, I am thrilled with the new sounds I am getting. The tiny switches are very easy to use and seem very quiet. One of my favorite settings is all 4 coils in parallel. I also love being able to compare the sounds of the screw coil to the slug coil to both coils in parallel. I couldn't have done this mod at all using push pull pots because of the 2 wire leads on my guitar. I don't recommend using stock Gibson pickups to do this mod but if you have 4 wire pickups, it should be a lot easier to do. Even my band members are commenting on some of the great new tones I am getting. The reason I am giving 4 stars is primarily due to the final result -- amazing new tones. These rings have turned my already great sounding guitar into a flat out tone monster.

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• Super Simple, Easy, They Do What they are Supposed to Do

  

  As reviewed by Mike Reynolds on 3/15/2011

  I installed these on a Yamaha AES620 (les paul style guitar) so that I could use the full features of the 2 Seymour Duncan P-Rails pickups(humbuckers that include a p90 and a hot rail-strat pickup) that I installed. The point of these Triple Shots is to use just a single coil of a humbucking pickup, and to be able to organize them in series, parallel or solo. These allow me to just use one or both p90's, the rails together or alone, or the full features of the humbucker. I love that they are sleek, simple and out of the way. I would have had to install push pull pots, or drill holes and install more switches on the body of the guitar. The Triple Shots, house the P-Rails perfectly and work exactly as advertised. I only have basic soldering skills but was certainly able to install these very easily. I am in love with the sound that I am getting, and these were the perfect solution for making the switching system work with these particular pickups. I would recommend them for anyone who wants to install a multi featured pickup like the P-Rails.

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• waste of money....

  

  As reviewed by Richard on 1/17/2011

  First off, make sure to measure your stock mounting rings for proper fit. Mine were 1/8" longer than the SDTS's so I have pickup holes showing beneath the triple shot mounting rings on my les paul. Then of course there is the sound difference. Series of course is what humbuckers are actually made around. Vendors know you are 95% of the time going to wire your pickups in series so they base the sound around that. Swtiching to parallel while incredible easy on the triple shot system creates a different sound but not enough for me to want to spend 50 bucks on these things again. Lastly you have coil split, the best way to describe coil splitting is add an extra tone knob or treble boost to your guitar and turn it up halfway. All in all, I trouble mounting the rings as explained above, and they didn't give me enough of a sound difference to replace the 50 bucks in my wallet so my recommendation would be, if you want to do any other kind of wiring, just buy a push/pull pot and wire up for coil tapping because series/parallel is a waste. I don't even see a point in doing this tho', if you want a single coil, buy a SC guitar, if you want a humbucker, buy a humbucker guitar. Don't buy one and wish for the other....just my .02

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