Has anyone REALLY nailed P90 tone in a humbucker?

[trioderob]

I have a 79 walnut gibson "the paul"
I love the tone of real p90s and would love that
sound out of the 79 gibson.

I dont want to route out the gibson but I have heard the
hunbucker sized p90s dont really "nail" the vintage tone because
the magnets are too small.

sort of "close -but no cigar"

any input on this?

[Possum]

Its not that the magnets are too small, its because you just can't fit a real P90 sized coil into a humbucker. The coil that fits in a humbucker is taller and skinnier than a P90 coil, which is long, short and fat. I make one called a KayBar "modern" thats made different than everyone else's, it comes pretty close but because of the limited space it is a bit brighter in some ways......so yeah "close but no cigar" and I tell all my customers exactly that. They are a bitch to make because P90 bobbins don't work so have to be hand made, so I boosted the price on mine hoping no one would buy them :-) If you really want a Paul with P90 tone, buy a cheapo like Agile or Dillion that already has P90s in them, make SURE you change out the pots first, pots in most of them wreck the tone of correctly made P90s. P90s KILL, they are the best pickup design ever in my opinion......

[Spence]

I had a customer bring me two sets of the Kent Armstrong variety. On opening them up I found a tall humbucker bobbin loaded to 8 K sat in the middle. The cover was completely full of wax. I made some bobbins that would fill the baseplate dimension using vulcanized flatwork and a wide spacer between the flats made from maple. I used 44AWG to get up to 8 k DCR.

It was a miserable experience that I never want to go through again but the tone was damn close to a real P90.

[TD_Madden]

I have tried a Seymour Duncan "Phat Kat" at the bridge of my LP that sounded pretty close......a little less hum due to the cover.

[Possum]

a humbucker bobbin sunk in wax, thats humorous :-) I did alot of experiments with the beast, managed to get 8K of 42 in there, but you make the bobbin too tall, the magnets don't have enough pole piece to grab onto so the output is real low because of low gauss. I've read here some guys chop down a P90 bobbin to fit in a bucker cover, doesn't work real well for me. I learned a little trick off taking apart an old Kay kleenex box pickup that I used in my vintage version, it doesnt sound like a P90 its sounds like something vintage and different, I don't sell alot of either one, I always tell customers its better to get a real P90 guitar if they want the real tone. Hand making those things isn't very profitable and always a pain in the butt anyway :-)

[Spence]

The Kent Armstrong P90-in-a-can baseplates are a standard product they use which is drilled for standard humbuckers, ones with both bobbins with screwpoles or the P90 thing. They are extremely difficult to get solder to stick to.
The conversion I made on the pickups allowed me to use standard PAf style magnets so I could get a close approximation to a P90. the guy who asked me to convert these 4 pickups for two of his Les Pauls was overjoyed with the result.
But like Possum says, any custom job like that doesn't really pay. best avoided.

[leftywinder]

Hi, Im brand new to the forum, but I started making P-90's, the traditional sized ones with individual magnets, 1 per polepiece, and a traditional handwound coil, and have had great results, I, have tried these with the humbucker sized coil, results great. Give the neodymiums a try, you will be surprised.

[Luijo]

Let me see if I got this right...you are making PUs with a neo magnet under each polepiece?
How is your magnetic string pull compared to regular P90s? You get a much higher output?

[Satamax]

I'm by no means a pickup maker, but i wanted to share, i have gibson original P90 from the mid 90 when i was doing my C&G of guitarmaking, and i've built a guitar, LP junior shaped with theses two, it's been my main electric ever since, and i have to say, it's high output, about 400/600mv peaks. I've used other P90, and the best ones are the gibsy ones, or may be some Kent armstrong overwound :D

Bye.

Max.

[leftywinder]

Luijo, and others, String pull is about like most humbuckers, and I am winding to about 9K, with #43 wire, distance from strings is a little greater than with humbuckers and they sound great and are more powerful than most P-90,s I have used. Thanks, Leftwinder The sacrifice is that with my design, I can't use adjustable polepieces, so I pre-stagger them for balanced output.

[Spence]

Leftywinder,you've created a pickup that sounds great ,not a P90. The constructional method you detail shows that this design of yours is as far removed from a P90 as a Jazzmaster pickup is.

[TD_Madden]

Spence,

Not to quibble, but if it SOUNDS like a P90, doesn't it meet the requirement?

[Earl Norton]

Yep.

Like a humbucker or single coil strat, the p90 designation is just a form factor and a general contruction type ie single coil. At least in my world.

[Luijo]

Leftywinder, you have clips we can hear?
I'm quite curious if you got the P90 tone in a new way or got a great sound (like Spence said) with a different approach. The way I see it, you're winning anyway.
A pic would be great too, just if you don't feel we're trespassing your intellectual property.

[Spence]

TD Madden said
"Spence,

Not to quibble, but if it SOUNDS like a P90, doesn't it meet the requirement?"

Yes that's right. So does it? the point I made is that I reckon it'll sound more like a Jazzmaster pickup.

Earl said

"Like a humbucker or single coil strat, the p90 designation is just a form factor and a general contruction type ie single coil. At least in my world."

That's not true. it's not a general form factor; it's quite specific. That's why the so called p90s on a Blues Hawk don't sound like P90s. They sound OK but they are not P90s. It's not a snobbery thing BTW, it's good old fashioned observation.

[leftywinder]

To reply to your query's I make a P-90 b0bbin, with 5/32 polepiece holes for my slugs, I pre-cut my slugs to the length I need (made slugs from mild steel rod) I wind the coil to about 9K, could increase this, but this sounds best to me. I use 6mm neo magnets that are cylindrical in shape, I press fit these into a wooden magnet holder, with all magnets oriented the same way. I use a 1/16 " aluminum base plate attached to bottom of wooden magnet strip, the bottom of the magnets touch this plate, I run a ground wire from this plate to my volume pot. My pickup does not have hiss or hum, and sounds like the P-90 dog eared pickups on my old Gibson ES-125TC, maybe even better, as they would hum a high volumes. I would like to make a similar pickup in a humbucker sized pkg., but I havent been able to get the bobbin size right yet. I will post some sounds and some pics., as soon as I figure out how to put them on, as it is my Son, who is the computer guy. I make guitars, also and use these pickups on a "blueshawk style guitar", I make humbuckers using the same style of neo magnet, but the 90's have the best sound.