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P90, world's biggest antenna or just another single coil?

musicispeace

musicispeace

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OK P90 fans out there. Just looking for your opinion. Are P90s noisier because they have more wire or is it all in the same ballpark with all single coils. I have strats with single coils and am doing OK with reasonable and livable "noise" but am stuck for ideas on another build idea. I dig single coils and have not had a P90 guitar before. My likely candidates would be BKP Mississippi Queen, BKP Blue Note, Wolfetone P90, or (if I wash enough cars cars and look really deeply under my couch cushions) Kinman. I would be an aspiring blues player at this point but prefer things on the brighter side tone wise. Thanking you and wishing all happy holidays/Christmas.
 
I have a mahogany-bodied Telecaster with a canary/ebony neck loaded with a pair of Roadhouse True Blue [single coil] P90's,  This Tele is a good deal quieter than my Strat loaded with low-output single coils taken from an Eric Johnson Strat.  I have no extraordinary shielding installed in either guitar, except for the aluminum foil backing on the Strat pickguard.  I find the P90's have plenty of bite, and plenty of output.  They are a decidedly different beast from Strat single coils.  The bridge P90 behaves somewhat similarly to a hot Tele bridge pickup, but with a little more bass & mid.  They are tremendously responsive to change in playing style, and I can set my amp to medium gain and get everything from Knopfleresque snap to a nice Pete Townshend power-chord kraaang.   They are plenty bright when wired with 250k tone and volume pots, but they'd be brighter still with 500k's. 



In short, these are my favorite pups of all the axes I own. 


I just took a look at the Roadhouse website (http://www.roadhousepickups.com ) and I don't see the True Blue set there anymore, since Ken's been winding a lot of repro Valco and Teisco pups but he has a variant he calls a P80, which has Alnico pole pieces instead of the adjustable metal slugs.  I'd buy 'em if I were in the market for a pair of P90's, just based on my wonderful experience with the first set of Roadhouse pups I got.  I would reach out to him to see whether he can wind a conventional P90 for you.  Ken's a great guy to do business with, and is very smart and helpful when it comes to identifying what to do to help you get your preferred sound.
 
P90s are THE blues pickup in my opinion; great distortion sound, great clean sound, and no noisier than any other single coils. I've pretty much been using Seymour Duncan 'vintage' and 'hot' models in several builds-they're not expensive, and they definitely sound ''real''. Whichever brand you choose, I think you're gonna love 'em.
 
I made one of the worst mistakes of my life when I passed up a vintage 1954 Les Paul because of the reputation of noisy P90's and bad intonation of a wrap tail. I could have owned that guitar for $800.00  :doh:. Then along comes Sean Costello and I think to myself I need to get me one of them babies so $2200.00 later I own 2009 R4 replica. So from my personal experience here are some thoughts for you.
1. Never pass up an exceptional deal or sounding guitar because of the "reputation".
2. If you are not familiar with Sean Costello please check him out on YouTube.
3. P90's are great! Just don't walk around on stage with you hands off the guitar or turn the volume all the way down when you not playing a song.
4. Once you join the P90 world let us all know your thoughts.

One final thing, Freddy King, John Fogerty, Leslie West, and  David Gilmore "Another Brick in The Wall" solo to name a few that killed with p90's.
 
Another P90 fan here. They can be noisy at high gain, but I haven't found it to be any worse than other singles. If you haven't played a p-90 guitar you should really do yourself a favor and go try one. It's definitely a different sound that you may or may not like if you're a strat guy.

Also there's lots of noiseless options. Kinman, Fralin, Duncan stacked, Anderson, Kent Armstrong, and surely more
 
P90s are definitely noisy, but there are much better gates available these days than there used to be so the effect can be kept more or less under control. The Rocktron "Hush" is a good unit, as is Electro-Harmonix's "Hum Debugger". In both cases, you don't get the dramatic switch you hear when some gates open/close.
 
Wow, many, many thanks to all! Sounds like I may have gotten the right idea for this as I was a humbucker guy when I played years ago the first go around and am not so much so now since I have returned to playing. I will definitely move further with this. Best to all of you guys.  :occasion14:
 
Bagman67 said:
I just took a look at the Roadhouse website (http://www.roadhousepickups.com ) and I don't see the True Blue set there anymore, since Ken's been winding a lot of repro Valco and Teisco pups but he has a variant he calls a P80, which has Alnico pole pieces instead of the adjustable metal slugs.  I'd buy 'em if I were in the market for a pair of P90's, just based on my wonderful experience with the first set of Roadhouse pups I got.
Click to expand...

In my Firebird, I have Ken's P-90 in the neck position with the P-80 in the bridge position and they really sound great.  The P-80 has just a bit more bite than the P-90.  I love em, however, I have never gotten a pickup from Ken that I don't love!  :headbang1:
 
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