Has anyone here tried wiring up a pair of P-90's in series?

[Steve A.]

I just picked up one of the $275 ESP EC-256P's from Hello Music which is a great playing guitar but their stacked P90 pickups are nothing like the real thing. So I put in a pair of P-90's that I took out of a PRS SE Soapbar II, replacing the Alnico 5 magnets with Alnico for a very smooth tone. The ESP has two volume controls and a single control- I rewired the volume controls like some of the jazz guitars from the 50's with the lead from the pickup going to the wiper and the lead going to the selector switch to the hot outside terminal. The advantage of that is you have a full range of sounds in the middle position from full neck to full bridge. (With the stock wiring if you turn one of the volume controls down to 0 it mutes the output from the guitar.)

I was thinking of using a push-pull pot for the tone control to switch the two pickups in series. The modified wiring of the volume controls would allow for a full range of sounds from full neck to full bridge, with some nice thick sounds in the middle. Or so I hope.

So my question: has anyone here tried wiring up a pair of P-90's in series? With PAF style humbuckers the series can be very thick without a lot of definition but with strat or tele single coil pickups the result is pretty slick.

Thanks!

Steve Ahola

P.S. I actually got two of the guitars, leaving one with the stacked P-90's for when the single coil noise is too much to handle. The neck pickup was kinda muddy so I added a 250pF cap from the junction of the two coils to ground (a trick from Bill Lawrence.)

[rjb]

So my question: has anyone here tried wiring up a pair of P-90's in series?

Not me. Why don't you just try it?

[jason lollar]

thats funny i just now finished a batch of 8 "doombuckers" for a customer which are 2 P-90s built into a custom pickup cover wired in series or parallel. Huge humbucker looking things with 8 adjustable poles. i havent heard them but its the customers third order. I dont think he has a website yet- a builder but it apparantly works in the bridge position but it would be hard to over pump the bass in the bridge.

[Steve A.]

Not me. Why don't you just try it?

But I just put a new set of strings on! Actually the guitar (which is their version of a Goldtop) takes long bushing pots so I either need to order some of those pots (with a horrendous shipping charge***) or remove some of the wood- perhaps with a forstner bit.

BTW for the other guitar (the one with the P90 stacks) I'm thinking about wiring up a push-pull pot as a phase switch, which should work well with "jazz" wiring of the volumes so you can mix in just a little bit of the out-of-phase signal. You can do that with the P90 stacks because they are humcancelling- a phase switch on the regular P90's would double the single coil noise.

Steve Ahola

*** For StewMac and some of the other companies I like to put together an order over ~$75 to spread the S/H charge around a bit.

[ken]

The P90's I built for this one work great wired in series. I can overdrive just about any amp very nicely with this design.

I made the rhythm pickup RW/RP with the lead pickup so when I'm in the series position I get a humbucker of about 14K DCR.

The switching is as follows...

One volume before switching for each pickup, and a master tone control. You can adjust how much of each pickup's output goes into your sound this way.

The miniswitches work like this - the top one (toward the neck) selects between the rhythm pickup alone or rhythm and lead. The center position of this switch turns the whole guitar off.

The middle miniswitch switches between both pickups in parallel, lead pickup alone, and both pickups in series.

The bottom miniswitch inverts the phase of the rhythm pickup.

ken

[Stealth]

So my question: has anyone here tried wiring up a pair of P-90's in series? With PAF style humbuckers the series can be very thick without a lot of definition but with strat or tele single coil pickups the result is pretty slick.

I plan to do just that with my Epiphone SG Junior, but I'm not going with a push-pull switch - instead, I'm using two rocker switches that will let me have a parallel, neck, bridge and series output.

thats funny i just now finished a batch of 8 "doombuckers" for a customer which are 2 P-90s built into a custom pickup cover wired in series or parallel. Huge humbucker looking things with 8 adjustable poles. i havent heard them but its the customers third order. I dont think he has a website yet- a builder but it apparantly works in the bridge position but it would be hard to over pump the bass in the bridge.

I'm really intrigued by this, feels like the pickups would look quite monstrous. Do you have any photos?

[jason lollar]

this is the first one I made- I already shipped out the last batch last night

[ScottA]

this is the first one I made- I already shipped out the last batch last night

[jason lollar]

the baron and his nastyness yikes!

[David Schwab]

this is the first one I made- I already shipped out the last batch last night

That's a crazy cool looking pickup!

[Steve A.]

this is the first one I made- I already shipped out the last batch last night

Darth Buckar!

[Steve A.]

this is the first one I made- I already shipped out the last batch last night

Darth Buckar!