How to get more high end in a P-90?

[belwar]

So i've got my first P-90's wound and overall i'm pretty happy with them, I would like to get some more high end out of them though. A little more sparkle in the upper notes if you know what I mean... I'm still pretty new at this and would love some help.. Here's my specs:

A5 magnets
No Keeper Bar (poles right against magnet)
42 AWG poly solderable
1/4" Internal Bobbin height
3/4" Filister head screws.
Rapid traversing scaterwound. Aprox 15-20 TPL.
10000 turns.

Im currently winding the core at relatively tight tension, then loosening it as I get to about 5000 winds to keep the bobbin from flaring.

I'm assuming the biggest alteration in tone is going to come from tension in the wire. Any thoughts on what I need to do to achieve my goal?

b.

[Norcal_GIT_r]

Try more tpl. 15-20 is pretty wide.

[John_H]

What are you using for a test guitar? The pickups might be plenty bright. What are the values of the pots, and capacitor?

[belwar]

What are you using for a test guitar? The pickups might be plenty bright. What are the values of the pots, and capacitor?

South American Mahogany les paul jr'ish guitar in the neck position. 500k RS superpots. 0.014 PIO caps.

[John_H]

South American Mahogany les paul jr'ish guitar in the neck position. 500k RS superpots. 0.014 PIO caps.

Try swapping the cap with different values. In my Jr I've got a .033 cap, and a 1m tone pot.

[belwar]

While I understand how cap values and tone pot values can alter the treble, im more talking about altering the windings, as the average person who buys them is likely going to have 22's and 500k's. That would work to brighten up an individual set, I want to brighten up every set

[John_H]

While I understand how cap values and tone pot values can alter the treble, im more talking about altering the windings, as the average person who buys them is likely going to have 22's and 500k's. That would work to brighten up an individual set, I want to brighten up every set

Gotcha; I'd try fewer turns, and less scatter for starters. You could experiment by stripping a few hundred turns off of one and comparing it. It might help, especially in the neck position.

[David Schwab]

Try using a keeper bar. That will bring up the inductance and lower the resonant peak, which should give you a nice upper mid peak, which brightens up the tone.

The older P-90's from the 50's - 60's has less wire on them too (around 8k), so they had less mids and more of a Stratish tone, just fatter.

[GlennW]

The older P-90's from the 50's - 60's has less wire on them too (around 8k), so they had less mids and more of a Stratish tone, just fatter.

By "8k", do you mean 8,000 turns? I thought the old ones were about 8K resistance with 10,000 turns.

[David Schwab]

By "8k", do you mean 8,000 turns? I thought the old ones were about 8K resistance with 10,000 turns.

8K resistance. I don't know how many turns, but I had an old ES-330TD with dogears that were about 8K. Then I had some P-90's from a 70's SG, and they were about 9K and sounded a lot different. More midrange.

I liked the ES-330's neck pickup tone, so I took one of the SG's pickups and unwound about 1,000 turns and used it in the neck position on a Les Paul copy I had (along with a patent label humbucker at the bridge).

These were all readings I did with an analog VOM, so who knows how accurate they were.

[David King]

If there's any room on the bobbin for a thicker insulated wire then that should help too. You might even get away with thicker insulation on the next thinner AWG if you don't have the room but I wouldn't know that for sure.

[GlennW]

...so I took one of the SG's pickups and unwound about 1,000 turns...

I might try that. The pair I have is supposedly from a 2007 SG and they read about 8.35-8.4K. Do you that .5K will make a noticeable difference? Mine hooked to 500K pots and .022uF polyester OD's.

I think I read hear where Possum said some of his were under 8K and somone commented on how clear they sounded.

[Mark Hammer]

10,000 turns on a P90 bobbin? I have no idea how that could be bright-sounding. Keep in mind that each of those turns has a much wider circumference than on a tall-n-thin Strat bobbin. So, by the time you've got 10,000 turns on, you are likely to have much more than 8k DCR.

[kevinT]

As mentioned, more turns per layer and loosen the tension a bit.

I would also try different fillister pole pieces. I have about 11 different fillister screws from various sources and they all sound different. Some are darker and don't do much to enhance the tone and some are brighter and add a lot of sparkle.

[Mike Sulzer]

I would like to get some more high end out of them though.

P 90s have a pretty low resonant frequency. Strat pickups have a high resonant frequency; they sparkle. (http://www.seymourduncan.com/comparetones has the resonant frequencies of all of Duncan's pickups.)

Changing the cap in the tone control will not give you more brightness. The cap is out of the circuit when the control is on 10. Using a large tone pot increases the Q and makes it sound brighter, up to a point, but if the resonant frequency is low, it cannot help very much.

Increasing the inductance still more will lower the resonant frequency. If the frequency is low this will give you even less high end. Only if the resonance is very high (above the response of the guitar) will lowering it (into the range of the guitar) give more highs.

If you want to raise the resonant frequency, you use fewer turns on the pickup. That works every time.