p-90 and paf monting screws?

[clown_luthier]

where do you guys buy screws like this in 1000+ quantity for reasonable price?

[belwar]

I think I have a boat load of the screws (humbucker) that I dont want. I went out of my way to get the flat heads and then I realized it was just silly. Aparently I cant hold a flat screw driver correctly to save my life. Now I use phillips head screws and im as happy as a pig in shit.

I'll sell them too you for what I paid for them if you want em. I gotta dig up an invoice though. The springs I just buy from stewmac. The work well and are not too expensive.

as for the P-90's screws, i havent found a good source yet. a friend has been nice enough to give me a bag full.
bel.

[Joe Gwinn]

Originally Posted by belwar

I think I have a boat load of the screws (humbucker) that I dont want. I went out of my way to get the flat heads and then I realized it was just silly. Apparently I cant hold a flat screw driver correctly to save my life.

Accurately made screwdriver tips are important, tips that fit the screw heads tightly, especially with slotted screws. I'm partial to Wiha screwdrivers.

[Possum]

Mojo has both bucker adjusting screws, ring mount screws and P90 soap bar and dog ear mounting screws. I've used the soap bar screws, they are OK, I stripped a few heads out but just buy extra and use a good screw driver that fits right.
Mojo Pickup Parts P-90 Soap Bar Mounting Screws Nickel / 10

[clown_luthier]

Originally Posted by Possum

Mojo has both bucker adjusting screws, ring mount screws and P90 soap bar and dog ear mounting screws. I've used the soap bar screws, they are OK, I stripped a few heads out but just buy extra and use a good screw driver that fits right.
Mojo Pickup Parts P-90 Soap Bar Mounting Screws Nickel / 10

Thanx Dave,

do you think this screws look vintage correct?
take a look at my pic of p90 screws above

[Possum]

Probably not, but I've not seen real soap bar mounting screws before, but finding ANY soap bar mounting screws isn't easy. I think WD Music has them too...

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by belwar

I think I have a boat load of the screws (humbucker) that I dont want. I went out of my way to get the flat heads and then I realized it was just silly. Aparently I cant hold a flat screw driver correctly to save my life. Now I use phillips head screws and im as happy as a pig in shit.

I can't imagine for the life of me why anyone uses slot head screws for anything!

I also got a bag of phillips head humbucker height screws and have been switching them out on all my guitars.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by clown_luthier

do you think this screws look vintage correct?

Unless you are trying to make a counterfeit pickup, or plan on sending them back in time to sell to Gibson, who cares?

This whole pseudo vintage fad is just stupid.

[clown_luthier]

Originally Posted by David Schwab

Unless you are trying to make a counterfeit pickup, or plan on sending them back in time to sell to Gibson, who cares?

This whole pseudo vintage fad is just stupid.

Thanx guys, i know it is stupid, but i love vintage stuff more than modern
but that's just me

[Possum]

I don't think I'd call it a fad. When I was 17 in 1967 vintage Gibson stuff was already considered prize stuff and I remember hearing a rumor back then that vintage Les Paul 'burst could cost as much as FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! Man, that was crazy! It wasn't like anyone was trying to "recapture their youth" because we were still in high school. Personally I could give a rat's butt for what kind of mounting screws I use, but there are good reasons to pay attention. Vintage soap bar mounting screws were magnetic and became pole pieces when the pickup was mounted, throwing another 2 pieces of steel in there has an effect. Stainless steel makes better screws but aren't magnetic. Personally I don't think anyone has really improved over PAFs, P90's, P13's, Kleenex box pickups, etc. etc. There are very few who take the immense amount of time to figure out how to make these things accurately these days.

[Possum]

WD music has P90 mount screws but no photo:
* WD Music Products - P90 PICKUP MOUNTING NICKEL ( 100 )

[LtKojak]

Originally Posted by Possum

Personally I don't think anyone has really improved over PAFs, P90's, P13's.

It all depends in what do you mean by "improving"?

[Possum]

Look at it this way, what kind of pickups sell the most every year, all the time? Its not Lace alumatones, EMGs, or Bill Lawrence stuff. What sells are traditional designs. Because they were just plain simple usually and just are very musical. 50 years from now they will still be the top selling pickups, even when laser pickups and optical stuff comes along. Same reason players mostly want tube amps. Bass players are maybe less traditional than guitar players maybe, even in the blues scene I see guys showing up with weird 10 string basses and strangeness. The engineer designed gimmicky stuff doesn't stand the test of time usually. They think they are "better" meaning more efficient, reproducing the actual sound of the string etc. but thats not what players want to hear usually, hifi pickups aren't very popular. The vintage thing isn't a fad, its because that stuff just sounds good and always will. Same thing in amp world, boutique guys are mostly doing old Fender and Marshall designs, sometimes "improving" them and ending up with stuff that doesn't sound as good :-) My opinion, shoot me

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by clown_luthier

Thanx guys, i know it is stupid, but i love vintage stuff more than modern
but that's just me

But.. you can never make a vintage pickup. It will always be modern. Unless you made it 50 years ago.

The look of a screw doesn't change the tone either.

You are being brain washed by the same hype machine that writes Gibson's ad copy.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Possum

Look at it this way, what kind of pickups sell the most every year, all the time? Its not Lace alumatones, EMGs, or Bill Lawrence stuff. What sells are traditional designs.

I'd like to see some numbers on that. You need to think of it this way, if you are looking at pickup sales as far as what's in a new guitar when you buy it, then I think you'll find a lot more Lace pickups in Fenders during a certain period than any third party pickups. Same goes with newer Fender or Gibson pickups. For a lot of people, they use what the guitar came with, and those are vintage designs. But they didn't have a choice when buying the guitar. It's like what OS is on your new PC?

Now if you are looking at after-market pickups, I'd wager that EMG sells a whole lot of pickups. More than any single boutique maker.

And even with humbuckers... sure, you see two coils with more-or-less the same dimensions are Gibson, since they were all replacement pickups for Gibsons, but they aren't all wound like vintage pickups.

And once again, look at all the Schecter, Ibanez and ESP guitars on the market with EMGs and DiMarzio type pickups.

I think the vintage clone market is much smaller than you think.

The real disturbing part of the quasi vintage fad is the impact on music. You get players that think there is only one tone that comes from a given brand of guitar based one the tone of a hand full of players on old records. And this player will think he can't play unless he has the gear his hero used. And we get stuck listing to the same music regurgitated over and over again!

I'm sure few here will agree with me on that, but that's my opinion. It's nice to see that guitar is so popular these days, but the truly talented are over shadowed by the copy cats. But I guess that's how it always is.

[Possum]

the look of screws DOES change the tone. Try a Guitar Jones (may he rest in.....peace, maybe...) bucker pole screw, then replace it with any of the ones I"ve had made. The GJ screws have tiny heads and barely a slot in them, the ones I use have big heads and big slots, just the physical proportions make the two sound radically different. A stainless steel P90 soap bar mount screw and a steel one change the tone in the pickup, and usually they will look different, the vintage type ones have round heads and the modern ones have flat tops.

STock guitars from the big names Fender and Gibson almost always have vintage type pickups, vintage replicas they're not, I'm not talking boutique pickup makers here I'm talking the whole picture, the entire industry, the vintage types I am sure outnumber EMG or any of the engineer techy types. Look at bands like White Strips, they're rediscovering vintage guitars and pickups and doing cool things with them. Basically all of it is regurgitated music, every star God guitar player got there by learning from the masters that preceded him. I like jump blues players like Watson etc. its like SRV, he took something old and made it even better and made it his own. I don't think there is any truly original music, its all been done before. I like space music, but really that stuff came from movie tracks and was expanded on. I don't know why you are so disturbed by craftsmen studying the old arts of pickup making and keeping them alive, should we quit making violins and harpsichords because they are vintage instruments, all they are doing is playing stuff over and over that was written hundreds of years ago, does it have to be new and original to be good? I just think that the vintage types of pickups will always be around and will be the mainstay of the guitar market for a long time to come. I like doing vintage type pickups because there are very few actually doing them right, the way they were actually done. Builders don't seem to see whats in front of them when studying a vintage pickup, they miss all the details that create those tones, it took me years to learn how to really look at these old artifacts. PUtting a stewmac kit together does nothing to get you there. So thats my niche and I enjoy it and my customers come back for more. Even my unique designs are tributes to the past, thats why, like you, I study patents because those guys had reasons for what they did, and that stuff is fascinating to read....

[Artur pickupmaker]

I think Belwar and David should exchange their boats of screws.

[Possum]

David, you're also forgetting the fact that I'll be 60 pretty soon so I AM vintage BE the vintage, SEE the vintage, MAKE vintage reproductions, grasshopper I've tried alot of the so called improved pickups, the noiseless stuff, EMG was my client for 12 years and tried all their stuff, the most impressive pickups I've tried have always been the old stuff, the musicality of those designs outshines the high tech ideas for me. I'm also not a big fan of modern type basses, one of the best ones I've heard for blues is the old Harmony semi-acoustic type the host uses at the jam, but then there's NOTHING that beats an upright bass, thats my idea of killer bass tones. 'Scuse me while I go lay another dinosaur egg, I guess......

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Possum

the look of screws DOES change the tone. Try a Guitar Jones (may he rest in.....peace, maybe...) bucker pole screw, then replace it with any of the ones I"ve had made. The GJ screws have tiny heads and barely a slot in them, the ones I use have big heads and big slots, just the physical proportions make the two sound radically different. A stainless steel P90 soap bar mount screw and a steel one change the tone in the pickup, and usually they will look different, the vintage type ones have round heads and the modern ones have flat tops.

They are a different alloy.. you know this. I have replaced the Stew-Mac screws with your screws, and your screws sounded better. But both have pretty much the same head size. They are almost exactly the same dimensions.

And I wasn't talking about pole piece screws. We were talking about the wood screws used to attach soapbar P-90's to the guitar body.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Possum

David, you're also forgetting the fact that I'll be 60 pretty soon so I AM vintage BE the vintage

Soon? I thought you were there already! I just turned 52 on Friday, so I'm vintage as well.

I'm not saying there isn't a (recent) market for repros, I'm saying that all the boutique builders together don't sell more pickups than EMG.

That's not saying which is better, just which sells more. Down with the mainstream I say!

I'd rather have DeArmond gold foils in a guitar than EMGs or real PAFs.

[Possum]

Well actually the size of the heads on the GJ screws and the teeny notch have an effect too. 52???? Man you just got outa the cradle! I guess that makes me a relic Well you seem to have a bias against vintage repro work, I'll have to admit when I first started making pickups I swore I would NEVER make vintage repro stuff But then for fun instead of making P90's the way I learned from Jason's book I got the baseplates and keeper and made one, and I was SOLD. That thing sounded way better to me. Personally I think anyone who seriously wants to make pickups should study the old masters first and really try to do what they did back then. It will teach you soooooo much you won't get any other way. Learn to make single coils first or you won't understand buckers very well, which are hugely complex in comparison. I recently cloned another vintage type bucker set and damn if I didn't learn a whole bunch of new stuff from doing that.

My beef, as you mentioned guys want to get the tone of their guitar heroes, is that they DON"T do enough research. Zeppelin tone through a Blues Junior with an Epiphone LP, just doesn't work. Master volume amps for Jimmy tone, NO. Most of them don't want to hear it though, they'd be hard pressed to get his tone from what he was actually using, or any of those guys back then, plus they could actually PLAY :-) Expensive low capacitance guitar cords? Stuff back then was junk, big tone cap connecing your guitar to your amp is what they were. Now are you gonna tell me you don't have at least one vintage type Fender bass guitar?

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Possum

Now are you gonna tell me you don't have at least one vintage type Fender bass guitar?

No.

Well I have this, which was once a '74 P bass!



It was an awful bass, so I made it into an 8-string back in 1980, and then I cut the body into this shape. In this picture it has a new neck I made for it.

I also have two '74 Rickenbacker basses, and a couple of old guitars, like a '72 Mustang and a '59 Jazzmaster.

I can get traditional Fender type tones from my "modern" basses just fine. It's not always the bass, but what you do with it.