P-90 Pickups

Part 2

There’s something about that big ol’ slab of Mahogany with that dogear P-90 screwed to it that, for me, gives the ultimate ‘classic rock’ tone. Examples of this are plentiful, and include Leslie West in the ‘Mountain’ days and beyond, the guitarist from Jethro Tull’s early years, Steve Marriott of Humble Pie, and ‘Lonesome Dave’ Peverett of Foghat.

 To my ears, that particular combination of wood & pickup give a balance of tone unequaled by any other. There’s a solid, fat bottom, sparkling highs, and a toothy, snarling midrange ‘bark’ that really cuts thru. The P-90 is somewhere between a Fender single-coil and a Gibson humbucker in its overall tonality. Being single-coiled with one row of pole pieces keeps the sensing area more focused than a humbucker, thus not canceling some of the higher harmonics the way (I feel) humbuckers do. But the coil’s being wider than a Fender single-coil does spread the sensing area out a little bit, hence the meatier tone than Fenders give.

 

The soapbar P-90’s seem to me to have a more refined, cleaner, and less edgy tone than the dogears. I’m not sure why that is. I suspect that it has to do with the way they’re coupled to the guitar body a little less rigidly, because otherwise, there’s no difference in the coil or magnet structures at all. The only difference is in the baseplate, and that is only that the dogear units have, well, a ‘dogear’ tab on each end of the baseplate.

However, these P-90 pickups are definitely no tone-slouches, either. Listen to ‘Who’s Next’, for example, or some of the old ‘Trapeze’ music. Those guys at that time played SG Specials with the two P-90 soapbars, and of course, they roared!

 The one downside of these pickups is the fact that they don’t cancel hum. At all.  In fact, they can be rather hummy and noisy. Good shielding in the pickup and control cavities of your guitar will help reduce this, but it will never eliminate it completely.

Take a good listen to ‘Mississippi Queen’ turned up really loud (is there any other way to listen to that song?). In between the riffs in the intro, you can hear that 60 Hz hum. But who cares, because in the ensuing roar of the riffs, there’s tone for years!

 There is an alternative nowadays, though, called the P-100, which is essentially a stacked humbucker in a P-90 housing. I don’t have any personal experience with these (YET), and you’ll hear or read varying opinions of them ranging from claiming that they sound just like a P-90, to claiming that they do NOT sound like a P-90.

Generally, though, the consensus is that they lack the output of a real P-90. I can see why this would be, since part of the normal coil space is taken up by a bobbin-plate separating the stacked coils, rather than having magnet wire occupying that volume. But I would also think that they’d have basically the same overall tonality of a P-90 in the same location, given that they have virtually the same sensing area/pattern. Maybe not.

 So, if you happen to have a P-100 lying around doing nothing, we’d be glad to drop it into something and give it a serious workout to determine whether it really does or does not stack up (pun intended) against a real P-90, and produce an objective report on our findings.

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WEBMASTER NOTE:

 Thanks Dave!  This sounds like the next electric guitar project I'm gonna work on.  When I do, I'll take some pictures and post an article about the process.  Mmmmm...  Mahogany!

Please do send us something to mess with!  We'll get to it and give it a fair review and tonal analysis!

Quest on! 

Please tell us about your experience using P-90 Pickups!