Gibson P-90s with Alnico rods? HUh?

[jack briggs]

I make them with the standard bobbin height spacing as a soapbar and they still are more open and Fendery than any P90. Nice for neck position with a standard P90 soap in the bridge.

[Steve A.]

Just wondering if anybody else besides Tony Bones has actually looked at the P90SR and P90ST pickups. I got a pair of 2014 Melody Makers with the idea of adding a dummy coil. With no room for fancy switching (like on the Blueshawk) I was going to swap a bridge pickup for a neck pickup and vice versa so each MM would have a pair of NWNP pickups with a Chiliachki-inspired dummy coil inserted into the ground circuit of both pickups (bypassing the dummy coil with a 10k trim to dial in amount needed.)

The more I look at these pickups the more I suspect that the coil wires don't actually touch the alnico slugs with the molded bobbin having plastic sleeves into which the slugs are inserted. If that was the case I could remove the slugs with, say, an arbor press and then reinsert them backwards so that the neck and bridge pickups would be of the same polarity (I believe that I would need to swap the hot and cold leads for one of the pickups to keep the two pickups in phase.)

I had been (w)racking my brain trying to figure out where I could locate a dummy coil since there is not room under the pickups or in the control compartment for my normal weapon of choice: a P90 bobbin filled with 32 or 36 gauge magnet wire. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: remove the PCB and wind the dummy coil around the 4 pots (after first putting a few wraps of electrical tape around the pots for insulation.) With the PCB removed I could shield the control compartment to lower the noise floor. Game on!

FWIW I would compare these pickups to the wide oval pickups used on Gibson lap and console steels in the late 40's before they switched to a design closer to a modern P90 in 1950 or 1951. And the 2014 MM's are more like a LP Jr Special (Special Jr?) with two P90-style pickups and four control pots than the earlier MM reissues. Its a very resonant guitar with a set maple neck- a definite keeper! BTW it has a carved mahogany top.

Steve Ahola

[SpareRibs]

FWIW I would compare these pickups to the wide oval pickups used on Gibson lap and console steels in the late 40's before they switched to a design closer to a modern P90 in 1950 or 1951. And the 2014 MM's are more like a LP Jr Special (Special Jr?) with two P90-style pickups and four control pots than the earlier MM reissues. Its a very resonant guitar with a set maple neck- a definite keeper! BTW it has a carved mahogany top.
Steve Ahola

Hello,
The steel guitar pickups you are referring to are PU380 in the Gibson lap steels.

[Alberto]

I’ve made some of these as well, mostly humbucker sized, with or without a baseplate. I really liked the sound and the customers loved it too. Enough turns and they can work with 500k pots without being too shrill.

[Richard]

I'm pretty sure the top is maple. Looking very closely at the sides I can see a slight band around the edge where the pieces meet, and where the paint is gone (no inexpense was spared in the finishing of these guitars) the color of the wood is different.

[Tony Bones]

Yeah, it has a thin mahogany body with a maple cap. The cap is roughly the same carve and thickness as a typical Les Paul.

The thin body, maple neck, and Jazzmaster-like pickups make it an interesting instrument. I was swapping in different traditional P90's but ended up with the Alnico slug P90S's back in there. I added a steel back plate to the bridge pickup and nickle-silver covers to tame them a little. I actually really like the guitar. It's not like a typical Les Paul, but it plays really well and has a unique sound.

[buddha0709]

I had to fix one of those recently. One of the magnets was completely dead.