The distributor uses ONE coil, which operates on every spark. Using multiple coils can eliminate the distributor: one per cylinder, or one per cylinder pair. The wasted spark method fires two cylinders (pairs) simultaneously, one in the exhaust and one in the firing cycle. There are coils available with two high-tension leads for this purpose. The differences between a distributor system and a multi-coil (MC) system are:

• Wasted spark firing eliminates the distributor and its associated mechanical faults.
• Multi-coil (wasted spark) systems have only ONE spark gap, and deliver more spark energy.
• Multi-coil systems deliver more spark energy, because each coil has more time for re-charging.