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Favorite P-90s for your SGs?


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Posted

I traded off my SG Std this morning for a Classic because I've really been wanting one, but while the bridge pickup is "okay", the neck is fairly muddy to my ears. I've not had too much time to mess with it yet of course, and while swapping the pots to 500k, and/or playing around with the pickup heights might be the cure, I'm interested in seeing if anyone else has changed their P-90s.

 

Classic rock is what I'll be playing with this guitar. The dog ear bridge pickup in my '64 SG Jr is about my ideal bridge pickup. Thick and meaty, but not too middy or muddy. 8.5k of perfection, if you ask me. I was prepared to not like the bridge pickup in the Classic after reading a bunch of reviews, but it's not half bad. There's an obvious quality difference between it and the one in the '64, but it can still hang.

 

Neck pickup? Less mud, more woodiness and chime is what I want.

 

I think

gets a great tone out of his classic, but he's using vintage Gibsons. Unless I scored the right deal, I can't afford pickups like that, but I wouldn't mind finding a modern equivalent.

 

Thanks!

Posted

I have a 2008 (I think its a 2008) and I like the stock pickups a lot. I still need to adjust the neck pickup's height to balance out the volume more, but that is minor.

 

Watched that youtube video and that guy has a sound similar to mine. Through certain amps you can really hear that Pete Townshend Live At Leeds single coil brightness, but with a good deal of meat on it. What amp are you playing this beauty through? I do find my Classic sounds brittle through my Deluxe Reverb RI, but really sings through my Silvertone 1484.

Posted

EVOL!,

 

I've got a Boogie Mk IV and a silverface Fender Pro Reverb, I'm going to make sure I log some more playing time with it before I make any decisions on whether to get some more pickups or not, but I am interested in seeing who has swapped them out and for what.

Posted

Few months back I threw a Duncan Phat Cat in the bridge of my SG.....and it is the F***** S***. (Do y'all get pissed about cussin on these forums..?I played it safe..)Anyway, it is the cleanest, clearest P90 I've ever played, unless I don't want it to be. Then I go ahead and roll it up to 10 and it screams. Excellent responsiveness, smooth equalization, and bell-like clarity. It was a great decision to replace the Duncan JB that I had put in a few months before that. It was child'splay compared to the Phat Cat. So that's my spiel on p90's and why you should love them.

 

 

As an aside I kept the 490R in the neck because it is BUTTER...you guys know how sometimes some features of a guitar will just be outstanding out of the factory? I got lucky with this one...usually the pups are the first to go.

 

-Another guy

Posted

I swapped out the humbuckers on my early '90's SG Standard for P-90's (which involved some routing and a replacement pickguard) and I chose Lindy Fralin P-90's. They sound great to my ears, very airy and chimey with fantastic grind when overdriven. Of course I can't compare them to any other pickups in the same guitar. Regardless of which pickups you end up with, I would recommend getting an underwound neck pickup to balance the output. I went with 20%, which worked out great - of course you can also use pickup height to compensate somewhat.

Posted

ad9000,

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm probably down to either the Fralins or some Wolfetones. I read a lot that the Fralins can be "smooth" which isn't really what I would like to get, but your review doesn't sound like that. Wolfetone has a "Mean" and "Meaner" bridge pickups that do sound right up my alley, however. I would definitely go underwound on the neck pup no matter which ones I get, though.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

I like the stock Gibson P90 pickups myself.

 

Well, after swapping the Gibson pots out with CTS 500k volume and 250k tone controls, and the stock caps with Russian K40y-9 PIO caps (.022 bridge/.015 neck), I'd have to agree.

 

At least for now, that is! [biggrin]

 

The above changes really got rid of the mud in the neck pickup, but I would like to give the bridge pup a little more of the heat that my '64 Jr has. The Classic's bridge pickup is about 7.7k while the Jr's is about 8.4. Not a huge diff to be sure, but I sure like how that bad boy sounds. I recently played a show using only the Jr, and it covered everything in our set from The Small Faces to Judas Priest.

Posted

FWIW - I like the Dimarzio humbucking P90s. The DP162 is probably my favorite (even for bridge) but that may too hot for what you are looking for. They make several models and since they are 4 wire you can setup with a variable split (using a tone pot) to get a full range from single coil (split) to hot humbucking (and lots of cool tones in between).

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

A few years ago, I replaced the stock Gibson 490R/T in an SG Special with a set of P94s. That guitar sounds amazing. Highly recommend the P94s in an SG.

 

 

Actually, I haave been thinking about doing that very thing..good to hear some feedback ( pardon the pun) on this topic.

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