Dimebag '59 Pickup

[TheSleep]

I just picked up a 333 and want to replace the old Washburn pick ups. I already ordered a Bill n'Becky L500XL for the bridge and am not sure which Seymour Duncan '59 to get for the neck. From what I've read Dime used the SH-1B '59 bridge pickup, but I am seeing a couple different variations out there. There is this which is a "1-conductor" and this a "4-conductor" pickup. What is the difference between the two, and which one should I get?

Hoping maybe some Dime fans can point me in the right direction, cheers.

 

[itsme]

Only need 4-conductor if you plan to split it. If you never plan to split it get single conductor.

 

[Dimebag11]

From what I understand Dime used a bridge model in the neck

 

[cardinal]

Yeah it was the 59 bridge. Four conductor vs "one" is not going to matter for your purposes. Once you tie together two of the four (Duncans might be the red and white? Can't remember off the top of my head), you're left with just Hot and Ground; same as with the one conductor.

 

[Speeddemon]

Only need 4-conductor if you plan to split it. If you never plan to split it get single conductor.

And note that this can be useful if you're always running your amp's gain with some level of (light) crunch...when splitting the pickup, you can probably get an (almost) true clean tone (depending on your gain levels).
This is how I circumvented the green/blue volume jump issue on the original EVH 5150III 50W 6L6; I set the gain around 6 or 7 (out of 10) on the green/blue channel, which gives me a great rhythm tone on blue, but the green channel is slightly hairy then. If I then split one of my humbuckers (all my guitars have split options!), BOOM, instant clean-clean on green, without a loss of volume.

 

[harddriver]

I seem to remember that Dime used the regular 59Neck pickup early on and only switched to the bridge model 59 later on.

But I am unsure exactly when that change occurred. Maybe one of the resident Dime experts can clarify when he switch from the neck 59 to the bridge 59.