1st gen P90 - baseplate?

[simonm]

Hi guys - puzzle for you.

I have a very early P90, exactly like this one from the late 1940s.



- 3-ply bobbin, even has the bit of masking tape in the same position. The only difference is mine has no base plate. Does the one in this pic look original? seems a bit too clean to me.

Mine came to me like this several years ago, mounted in a pickguard with decaying cellluloid tortoiseshell:



Anyway - I recently decided I'd like to put it on a solid body gtr. I bought a suitably old baseplate off ebay, but it's weird.

First off - the side ears are not folded, the plate is totally flat, and second the actual mounting holes have a little bit of tin or something reinforcing them. Anybody familiar with early early P90s /seen this before? It seems to be brass with very old worn chrome. I think I read somewhere the original plates were steel?

[Plucky]

Re: 1st gen P90

Hey simonm,

What you have looks like a base-plate for a P-13 with adjustable poles and height adjustment. When Gibson introduced the P-90 in the late 40s, they sold off their P-13 stock to Harmony and maybe a few other companies. There were 2 basic types of P-13; one with exposed pole screws, and one without. There were variations on these which depended on their application. The ones with exposed poles were mostly found on archtop guitars, while the ones with the poles covered were found on both lapsteels and guitars.

The flat base-plates and are commonly found in lapsteel guitars with covered poles, and are height-adjustable. The base-plate on the assembled pickup you have shown is a sunken hard-mount, commonly found on archtops. Depending on your applications you can use the flat plate as it is, or bend the flanges to accommodate your needs.

I'm not familiar with the underside of the adjustable pole versions, so I don't know if there is supposed to be a through-hole for the lead as seen in the image below(non-adjustable pole version).

You may know most of that stuff already, and as far as the actual composition of the plate goes, I'll have to open up my lapsteel and check. Hope I helped a bit...

-Ron

[David Schwab]

It also looks like a P-90 baseplate from an SG, the kind used with a pickguard.

[jonson]

The pickup at the top lefthand corner of the pickupedia homepage is one of mine. Not sure how it got there and will probably be my only legacy. Late 40/s brass baseplate, side lifts, no end ears and one leadout hole each end of plate. Theres some more pics back on a p90 thread about a year ago.

[spud1950]

Here's some pics of an adjustable pole piece P13,top and bottom, from a Harmony.Looks like your baseplate is indeed off one of those.

http://harmony.demont.net/pickups/images/0061.jpg

http://harmony.demont.net/pickups/images/0062.jpg

[Plucky]

It also looks like a P-90 baseplate from an SG, the kind used with a pickguard.

That.
Also.

[Plucky]

Three things are bugging me about this base-plate, having taken a closer look at it:

1) there are no holes for the lead terminals evident on every P-13 I have seen.

2) The distance of the height-adjustment holes from the 'body' of the plate is greater than other P-13 examples I have seen.

3)The reinforced holes on the flanges.

Hmm...

[Possum]

...

There were actually four versions of P13's, the old "knuckle buster" version with a comb like pole steel assembly, cut like a big "T" with 6 square fingers at the top for poles, a sort of blade version with a humbucker type magnet as the blade pole, the screw pole version with the screws threaded into a solid steel core, there's another version but I can't remember what that one is offhand. they all eventually evolved into the production friendly P90.....

[simonm]

Wow - pretty comprehensive answers guys! Before today I had no reason to even know exactly what a P13 was, but now I do - thanks a lot. I guess I'm bending the flanges!

[spud1950]

Here's some highly detailed pics of the insides of one the versions of a non adjustable pole P13's.

http://www.kilback.net/p13smooth/

[simonm]

ok, well - turns out it's an SG Special baseplate after all, with the reinforced flanges and everything....



http://vintageamps.com/plexiboard/vi...p?f=31&t=82023

[David Schwab]

ok, well - turns out it's an SG Special baseplate after all, with the reinforced flanges and everything....

I win!

I had a set of those once, which os why I suggested it.