A tele build - pickup options

[Danuda]

I am building my first Warmoth and I am looking for some advice on what pickups to go with.  My current guitar is a PRS SE (the Korean ones) with humbuckers at the neck and bridge.  The guitar I am building is going to be a rear route alder tele body and tele maple neck with rosewood finger board and a fixed bridge.  I am torn between a few different pickup combinations and wanted to hear your opinions on them.  Basically here they are:
Option 1:
SD Phat cat P90 - Neck
SD SH-4 HB Bridge

Option 2:
Rio Grande Bastard p90 neck
Rio Grande Crunchbox HB bridge

Option 3:
P90 bridge and Neck and I am not sure what kind I would do.

I was going to go with a hotter HB at the bridge for the SD option, but I wanted nickel covers   What would you guys recommend?  I primarily play alternative rock/Rock.

 

[dNA]

there are at least a dozen common questions that people would ask you before answering that question. What kind of music do you play? What kind of rig do you use? How do you like your other guitar? Are you trying to make this guitar sound more or less like your other guitar, totally different, or somewhere in between?

My instinct would be to go for variety. lately I've been loving the way p-90's look on a Tele. And then I could plug Roadhouse Pickups (http://roadhousepickups.com), since Ken is a forum member and he's awesome. And i think a number of other forum members will jump up to second that vote of confidence.

 

[Danuda]

I should have been more specific.  I was worried about putting to much in though.  Here it goes.
I primarily alternative rock/rock.  I use a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe on the clean channel and use a vox satchurator for distortion.  I like my PRS, but the pickups kind of get muddy for me especially as I turn up the gain.  They sound a lot better at the edge or just over breakup.  I don't want an exact sound to my other guitar which is why I want to try a P90 at the neck and maybe the bridge.  I am not sure how well two p90's will sound for the music I play and I have never played them before.  Also I have heard people mention that P90's can be loud with fluorescent lighting.  I play in a gym quite a bit with those metal halide lights overhead.  Would those cause the same problem?

 

[drewfx]

I put a Phat Cat in one of my guitars and it doesn't have the raw aggressive attack of a "real" P-90. It's more like a cross between a P-90 and an HB to me. Not necessarily bad, but if you want "real" P-90 tone and response in an HB size, I'd look at what else is out there.

I do really like an SH-4 JB in the bridge though.

 

[dNA]

Do you know anything about the stock pickups in your PRS? I haven't played extensively with the SEs to know if their pickups are really any good or what they're like. In my experience, the pickups they put in lower end production guitars (not to deride your guitar, my two favorite axes are comparable Ibanez's) tend to be loud and not very articulate. I think the loudness is to try and cover up the fact that they don't sound like much of anything.

An another note, I owned a Hot Rod DeVille 2x12 and it was always really mud in the low end. I don't know if that's a commonality in that line of amps or not, so it's hard to say whether or not the tone issue with your PRS is from the electronics or from the amp. It's extremely unlikely that the guitar itself is so warm that it itself is the cause of that issue - if it was then you would probably already have noticed if you ever played it unplugged.


I would highly recommend finding a set of pickups that you're really happy with in your current guitar before you decide on anything for your next one. For all you know, you're rig is the problem and buying a new guitar with new pickups may not be any better.
I personally spent years changing pickups a lot, buying and selling several different guitars, and really struggling to be happy with my gear until I finally got a nice amp that works for me and now almost anything sounds at least decent from the get-go.


as for particular pickups, I'm a huge DiMarzio fan. Personally I think there are a dozen and one manufacturers that'll make you happy, but DiMarzio has incredible customer service and an exchange policy that basically lets you try out 2 different pickups for every 1 that you buy. If you decide to try them out, I can recommend specific models.

 

[Danuda]

I have looked online for information about the pickups in the PRS SE, but I have not been able to find anything about them.  They are some sort of PRS brand, but they are not any of the replacement pickups available on their website.  The actual guitar itself has really good build quality for the price so if there is anything wrong it would be the pickups.  It is possible that a pickup change in the PRS could help, but I wanted the challenge of building my own guitar and I thought it would be fun.  I figured I could build the guitar and fiddle around with the pickups on that guitar instead of my PRS which I have a bit of a nostalgic attachment to.  The biggest thing I wanted to avoid was build the guitar and have it sound exactly the same as my PRS.  I guess I am looking for two distinctly different guitars.

 

[Jusatele]

Looking for P90 tone in a none P90 is difficult. One of the main reasons a P90 sounds the way it does is because it has a unique magnet arrangement. It has 2 bar magnets with the similar poles facing the pole pieces. No other Pickup uses this and it creates a unique magnetic field that is part of the P90 tone.That is why they are so popular, they offer a base you cannot get else where.
Now I have a Custom 22 triple soapbar I got about 7 years ago and can tell you that I use the axe a lot because of the P90 sound, they are fat and smooth with a chime like ring. Smooth as silk and when they start to break up an amp it comes on with a finesse that does not interrupt the tone, everything comes through. It is a tone that you can seek and seek but without P90s it is not there.
I think if you are looking for that, P90s are the only way to get it.
I am having a tele body made by Warmoth right now with 2 P90 pickup routes so I could get that sound from it, I plan on using them to drive a tube amp and snarl, I use the PRS to give me a much cleaner tone.
However you go  I think if you go with a P90 in the bridge, I know you will not be disappointed, how you fill out the neck pickup may be a decision about you style of music, but then I would listen to sound bites side by side, you do not want a mis matched set of pickups, you want them to balance and add to each other.

 

[Cagey]

Also I have heard people mention that P90's can be loud with fluorescent lighting.  I play in a gym quite a bit with those metal halide lights overhead.  Would those cause the same problem?

P90s are single coil pickups, so they're always going to be noisy if you play anywhere in a developed country on Earth that has public electricity service. Metal halide fixtures are at least as bad or worse than fluorescents about radiating EMI, although some of them sound different because they'll do some frequency changing in the ballast, up as high as 500hz or so. Also, they're usually much higher-powered than fluorescents, so the EMI they put out has more influence and for a greater distance. On the plus side, they usually only put fixtures like that in larger areas, so you have to play louder. That makes your S/N ratio better, so it's not the end of the world.

Noise gates have come a long way, though. Back when I used old-fashioned single coil pickups, I used to use a Rocktron Hush unit, and it worked very well for me. Didn't really even know it was there. They can usually be had for less than $200, and it's money well-spent.

 

[Jusatele]

Also I have heard people mention that P90's can be loud with fluorescent lighting.  I play in a gym quite a bit with those metal halide lights overhead.  Would those cause the same problem?

Noise gates have come a long way, though. Back when I used old-fashioned single coil pickups, I used to use a Rocktron Hush unit, and it worked very well for me. Didn't really even know it was there. They can usually be had for less than $200, and it's money well-spent.

Old fashioned single coils, that is like calling a horned instrument old fashioned
I mean the humbucker was basically invented in the late 50s and first started showing up on guitars in the 60s, Cagey I have a lot of respect for your post, but that is going a bit far. Single coils do have problems with 60 cycle hum, but then they also produce tonal qualities that humbuckers cannot, that is because of the electrical field set up. The P90 is unique architecture, Fender went a different way with his pickups and they have a unique sound. and the same problems, however the humbuckers have problems with the high end timbre of a single coil. Lace has the innovative stuff with those aluminum things, but they are just a different application of those early pickups that surrounded the strings.  And active pickups? They never really have taken off because they lose something in the translation.
I would never call any of the designs old fashioned, there is a lot of research going into pickups, we see companies like SD splitting the coils of a single coil , D marzio has a small Fender style single coil using magnets set up like P90s, G&L and the Z pickups, these are all ways to deal with 60 cycle hum, but none of them have revolutionized the pickup so much that we look back at the father of modern pickups, the Charlie Christian, and call it old fashioned. The basis is still the same, using a coil to create a magnetic field to pick up the vibration of the string, convert it to a electrical signal and send it to the amp. When we devise a new way of that, and make it commercially successful, then we can call pickups as we know them today old fashioned.
Personally, I can live with the hum to get that fat clear tone of a P90. I roll off the volume between songs, try not to play under florescent etc. A good club has dealt with eliminating hum factors from around the stage.
Anyway, noise gates can be the way to go bu then the are another entire argument all together

 

[dNA]

Old fashioned single coils, that is like calling a horned instrument old fashioned
I mean the humbucker was basically invented in the late 50s and first started showing up on guitars in the 60s, Cagey I have a lot of respect for your post, but that is going a bit far. Single coils do have problems with 60 cycle hum, but then they also produce tonal qualities that humbuckers cannot, that is because of the electrical field set up. The P90 is unique architecture, Fender went a different way with his pickups and they have a unique sound. and the same problems, however the humbuckers have problems with the high end timbre of a single coil. Lace has the innovative stuff with those aluminum things, but they are just a different application of those early pickups that surrounded the strings.  And active pickups? They never really have taken off because they lose something in the translation.
I would never call any of the designs old fashioned, there is a lot of research going into pickups, we see companies like SD splitting the coils of a single coil , D marzio has a small Fender style single coil using magnets set up like P90s, G&L and the Z pickups, these are all ways to deal with 60 cycle hum, but none of them have revolutionized the pickup so much that we look back at the father of modern pickups, the Charlie Christian, and call it old fashioned. The basis is still the same, using a coil to create a magnetic field to pick up the vibration of the string, convert it to a electrical signal and send it to the amp. When we devise a new way of that, and make it commercially successful, then we can call pickups as we know them today old fashioned.
Personally, I can live with the hum to get that fat clear tone of a P90. I roll off the volume between songs, try not to play under florescent etc. A good club has dealt with eliminating hum factors from around the stage.
Anyway, noise gates can be the way to go bu then the are another entire argument all together

I don't think he was saying that humbuckers are the way to go at all. What he meant by "old fashioned" is that nowadays there are so many great, authentic-sounding noiseless single coils on the market. Plenty of people will only use pickups that are hum-cancelling, because they see no reason to ever not use a noiseless pickup.
In this regard, conventional single coil pickups that do not cancel noise are old-fashioned. But this is art, not plumbing or automotive design or something... we use techniques and approaches to all kinds of things that have been around for ages. Calling something old-fashioned is not to state that it is defunct or out of style, it's just stating what it is.

 

[Jusatele]

well for something that is old fashioned, those old noisy single coils outsell any other pickup out there. The strat is the biggest selling guitar on the market
Teles are the rage right now
PRS just re released the custom 22 triple soapbar because of popular demand
seems a lot of people like those noisey pickups

 

[Cagey]

What he said.

 

[Jusatele]

Now I am the king of no noise in the strat, I run a SDs in my 2003 AM Std, A cool rails, a vintage rail and a Hot rails, all are single coil style pickups, but they are not single coils, they like so many of those "Modern" pickups which are nothing more than a stacked humbucker, and no they do not have a single coil sound. A single coil has a timbre that is really hard to duplicate. I notice that SD is now making Single Coils on circuit boards now. Gibson tried that once with humbuckers and found the bases cracked, I wonder if SD is going have the same problem.
The problem is a single coil sets up a unique electrical field, and the style of magnets, placement of those magnets, alloy of those magnets all effect the field. the coils is another factor, its windings, style of windings, gauge of wire,insulation on the wire. Base material under the coil, Such as in the Tele, A humbucking pickup is making a different electrical field due to the nature of the twin coil setup. The way the fields effect the tonal differences we find in the style pickups is the problem about them sounding different. If we could make a humbucker that did what a single coil does, or vise versa, we would also be able to make a pickup we could adjust to give us any sound and revolutionize the guitar.
It is like the modeling amp, Great idea, I own a Vox Vtx 120 stack it works so well, but If I had the room for about 6 amps I would not need the Vox, I would have the real thing that actually sounds like the real thing, not something close enough.

 

[dNA]

Now I am the king of no noise in the strat, I run a SDs in my 2003 AM Std, A cool rails, a vintage rail and a Hot rails, all are single coil style pickups, but they are not single coils, they like so many of those "Modern" pickups which are nothing more than a stacked humbucker, and no they do not have a single coil sound. A single coil has a timbre that is really hard to duplicate. I notice that SD is now making Single Coils on circuit boards now. Gibson tried that once with humbuckers and found the bases cracked, I wonder if SD is going have the same problem.
The problem is a single coil sets up a unique electrical field, and the style of magnets, placement of those magnets, alloy of those magnets all effect the field. the coils is another factor, its windings, style of windings, gauge of wire,insulation on the wire. Base material under the coil, Such as in the Tele, A humbucking pickup is making a different electrical field due to the nature of the twin coil setup. The way the fields effect the tonal differences we find in the style pickups is the problem about them sounding different. If we could make a humbucker that did what a single coil does, or vise versa, we would also be able to make a pickup we could adjust to give us any sound and revolutionize the guitar.
It is like the modeling amp, Great idea, I own a Vox Vtx 120 stack it works so well, but If I had the room for about 6 amps I would not need the Vox, I would have the real thing that actually sounds like the real thing, not something close enough.

all i want to know is, in making your points did you dually consider what I said or did you just skim it briefly enough to come up with a rebuttal? Because I would respond to what you've said, except I'd essentially be repeating what I said in the first place; which makes me think you didn't even read or pay attention to what I said.

You're defending something that was never attacked or put down. And you're arguing that there's no such thing as a noiseless single coil - Guess what! We all know that if a pickup is hum cancelling then it's really a manipulated variation on a humbucker. That being said, lots of people would argue that there are plenty of noiseless pickups that sound like authentic single coils. Just earlier this week I remember reading a thread on this forum with several people testifying to the awesomeness of DiMarzio's "Area" series pickups.

Personally, I've never used a noiseless single coil because I've barely even used any single coil pickups in the first place. So I'm not arguing for my own sake. Everybody knows single coil pickups are great. Most of us here are pretty well educated in the various factors that make pickups unique in their construction and function. If you wanted to make a point that you are of the opinion that modern noiseless single coils do not live up to the authentic originals, say that. This thread was about helping the original poster decide what he might want to put in his new guitar - not argue about what pickups are better. If you want to argue with people about subjective ideas, find another forum.




Sorry Danuda. I hope that somewhere along the way, you found some genuinely helpful information for your build.  :toothy11:

 

[Danuda]

I think so.  The more I read and the more I think about it I really think I want to try something different.  Since I don't have any experience with P90's I will probably get a humbucker sized P90 like the Phat Cat.  That way if I don't like it I can easily go back to humbuckers.  It sounds like I wont get a original p90's tone, but that is not what I am going for.  I am just looking for something different.  Thanks for the help everyone.