Kickstarter for a cool new pickup product...

[Ryan H]

My buddy Wolfe at Wolfetone Pickups started a Kickstarter almost 2 weeks ago for a new pickup design he's patented...a true, no-compromise P90 in a humbucker rout.

 

It uses a special cover to mount in the existing four holes of a humbucker mounting ring, and requires no modification of the guitar.

 

Problem is, the tooling is expensive, hence the Kickstarter. He's gotten some traction, but I figured some of you guys might be interested, considering a vast majority of Gibson guitars have their humbuckers mounted in rings. And well, some of the rewards are discounted pickups from his range, which is always a nice thing.

 

And finally, the link

 

 

Just helping out a friend and supporting a product I think is really cool. Thanks in advance to anyone who checks it out, and/or supports it

 

-Ryan

[JayinLA]

Be happy to drop a set in my Studio and do a review on Youtube.

[Ryan H]

And for those who'd like to hear them...the Doug & Pat Show on Youtube got a set of prototypes to test out and compare...

 

 

-Ryan

[daveinspain]

Like the sound of those P90s very creamy… Although I hear a definite hum happening in the background when the guitar is not being played...

[Dub-T-123]

Like the sound of those P90s very creamy… Although I hear a definite hum happening in the background when the guitar is not being played...

Sounds like a real P90 then!

[Ryan H]

Like the sound of those P90s very creamy… Although I hear a definite hum happening in the background when the guitar is not being played...

 

Wolfe's aim wasn't to make these hum-cancelling P90's. They're true P90's that fit in humbucker routs that use mounting rings. Most "Humbucker-sized P90's" are a compromise; they change the coil structure to make it fit, or use a smaller gauge of wire so the coil can be smaller, among other things. Wolfe's is just meant to be a real, regular noisy P90 that fits in a mounting ring-equipped humbucker guitar using a special cover.

 

-Ryan

[Notes_Norton]

All pure single coil pickups hum under certain circumstances. If they don't the tone is compromised.

 

A humbucker gets rid of the hum, but at the expense of compromising the pure tone.

 

It's a trade-off. You can't have both. It's like having a race car and fuel economy at the same time. You have to choose one or the other. Pure tone or no hum?

 

For years I brought a P90 faux-LP to the gig.

 

If the AC power is clean AND if there is not a lot of interference, there isn't any hum, or hum so low it doesn't matter. In 99% of the places I played, the ambient noise of the room (people chatting, glasses clinking, etc.) was loud enough to completely cover any hum.

 

There is one room I played where the hum was bad. There was also something backstage that was vibrating at 60Hz, which I believe was the problem. One of my P90s is Reverse Polarity, Reverse Wired so that if I engage both pickups at the same time, the combination becomes like a giant humbucker. This is the only room where I had to do that and play middle position all night.

 

I have 3 P90 guitars, and they are by far my favorite sounding guitars.

 

Now I gig with a pair of Duncan P-Rails that indeed are a compromise. Close to P90 tone, close to rail tone and close to humbucker tone. The compromise is a little less tone and a lot more versatility.

 

The P90 tone is good at the high end but weaker at the bottom, so I turn the treble down and up the volume a bit.

 

The rail tone is the weakest of the 3, it does have Stat-Nature but the output is low. Putting both pickups in the rail position gives me a better sound.

 

The Humbucker sound when engaged is very good.

 

I play a variety of music on the gig, and the audience doesn't know tone like musicians do, so the versatility for me is worth the slight compromise. I play in the P90 position most of the night.

 

If I wasn't a multi-instrumentalist (I take sax, flute, wind synthesizer, guitar, and a percussion controller along with 4 MIDI modules and a 12 channel PA Mixer, FX and so on) I'd do it differently.

 

I do one-nighters, it takes me an hour and a half to setup (leaving time to troubleshoot if necessary) and an hour to tear down. Bringing more than one guitar is not an option I want to consider. Thus the compromise.

 

If I only played guitar, I'd bring more than one, and one would absolutely, positively be a no compromise P90 guitar. Probably an ES-330.

 

I don't need another P90, but if I did, I'd definitely fund this Kickstarter. The project looks very interesting.

 

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