St James

OH MY SOMEONE WAS READING MY MIND !!!!!! I got turned onto P-90's as a young en working with the NY DOLLS as JOHNNY THUNDERS and SYLVAINS Guitar Tech in the mid 70's. Soon I had my first P-90 LES PAUL it was a 69 DELUXE that had the MINI-HUMS removed and P-90s PUT IN !!!!. Lucky for us lovers of Vintage guitars cause back then a 50's LP JR was just that a 15 yo used guitar so that 10 thousand dollar LPJR OR SPCL you see advertised NOW cost us maybe 500.00 back then. I know when the reason more than 20 of my collection is P-90 equipped. Being in love with the tone of the P-90 I got a 56 PAUL, they too back then were USED LES PAULS and could be bought for under a grand. I was fooling around with a 60 SPCL I picked up and found a surprise as the old fella who sold it to me said he never had a THING done to this guitar except set ups.... So when I opened it up and saw a .044 cap I was intrigued and did some research to find that a .044 mf cap was used quite often on single pup set ups do to the extra warmth and wider range of tone it gave these wonderfull sounding slabs of MAGHONY !!! I then started one at a time messing around with all my ax;s with P-90's and re-capping them some up only a few points and some all the way to a .044 or even higher, ya can;t screw it up ya keep moving in either direction till ya hear what ya want and with a .044 Orange drop I found MY nirvana with the P-90 making all my P-90 guitars have even more of a special sound to em than even before. The 2 that it made a HUGE difference to is my 56 LES PAUL and my FIREBIRD......those two are like MAGIC GEETARS NOW !!!! REMEMBER the P-90 was THE pup for slide guitars to begin with so add the right cap and a few tricks with your wiring and you'll be surprised as to what you can do. The P-90 that started as a P-13 used in Hawiann GRAND CONSOLE SLIDES, SILVERTONES< HAGSTROM, it';s originality was with the DEARMOND PUP, but Gibson;s re-design gave us the MOST POPULAR PUP EVER !!!! FROM LES PAULS, to FIREBIRDS, to many different ES models to the bridge in my TELE. BARE KNUCKLES make one that FINALLY gives a st-RAT some TONE and life !!!! lol What really blows me away is WHY can;t ANYONE INLCUDING GIBSON make a HUMBUCKER SIZED P-90 that even remotely sounds like the soap bar design???? I had a friend who bought a NIGHT HAWK last year and wanted 2 P-90;s in it. As ya remember the ORIGINAL NIGHTHAWK came with 3 pups a sinlge coil, a mini hum, and a regular size humbucker but the new ones were set up ike a BFG with a SOAPOBAR in the neck and a BURSTBUCKER PRO 3 in the BRIDGE so we wanted to change the BRIDGE to a P-90 and we had 8 DIFFERENT BRANDS to try. We went from the SPECIAL HAND WOUND CUSTOM P-90 to the CHEAP GFS MEAN -90 and SURF-90. UH at 38.00 each GFS definetly had the best sounding P-90 in that humbucker size that came closest to being the real deal. This pick up has defined many a ROCKER, BLUESMAN, AND JAZZ PLAYER......but IMO it really stick out in the BLUES and ROCK to give you either that GORGEOUS BELL LIKE QUALITY when played clean, or that beautifull slow gritty tone it gives as the tubes begin to saturate. It has been my favorite sound in a guitar since the 60's when I first started playing and 40+ years later the love affair with the P-90 has grown !!!! I need to figure out how to post some pics, as I am at my quota now for posting limits.... I shall remove a few older pics if needed so I can put up some real nice specimens.....thanks to all those who posted there P-90 beauties !!! The SPECIAL CLUB has ONE major requirement for membership A TRUE LOVE affair for the P-90 As many ax's that I have with P-90's in em which is somewhere around 20....I gotta say that IT IS CERTAINLY worth the money to buy the OLDER P-90s as it is with PAFS but from what I have found is the KEY is in the CAPACITOR, the old wood and pots and stuff all help but the cap is the cherry on the top !!!!! GREAT THREAD AND SOME BEAUTIFULL P-90 equipped geetars out there !!!! thanks for posting em guys. I'llget mine up ASAP. St James