How to get the best tone out of P-90 pickups (2024)

FAQs

How to make p90 pickups sound better? ›

P-90s are easy to modify. Changing the magnets and the pole screws can make a big difference; it's a lot cheaper than buying new set of pickups and you don't even need a soldering iron. Although stronger magnets produce higher output, it's not all about power.

Sound. Being a single-coil design, the tone of a P-90 is somewhat brighter than a humbucker, though not quite as crisp and snappy as Fender's single-coil pickups. The tone therefore shares some of the single coil twang, but having large amounts of midrange and often described as “thick".

So what does the P-90 sound like compared to single coil (or even a humbucker)? The P-90 falls somewhere in the middle of the two tonally. Generally louder and full than the single coil and quieter and a bit brighter than the humbucker.

Most pickups have 2 screws: one for bass side and one for the treble side. Clockwise turns usually increases the pickup's height and output and you can balance treble and bass by adjusting one side closer to the strings than the other.

While there isn't a magic number for guitar pickup height—every pickup and guitar manufacturer has their own pickup height specifications—we've found 3/32 of an inch (2.381mm) is a good place to start. The process of getting your pickups to this ballpark setting is easy.

Gibson invented the P90 before solid body electric guitars were being mass produced. They were putting those P90s on arch top jazz guitars. Usually a single neck pickup. They were quite literally invented for jazz.

How a humbucker sounds. Humbuckers have a higher output than a P90, so offer a very different playing experience. There's also so much variety in humbucker construction due to their popularity that it's hard to place them on the EQ spectrum.

P90s in particular are higher output than many other single coils due to larger windings. They have more midrange and less treble than a strat or tele pickup. They often pick up more hum from the surroundings than many other pickups.

Matt Bellamy of Muse uses P-90s extensively on several of his guitars. Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots used '57 TV Les Paul Special with P-90's prominently on their Purple and Tiny Music albums. The latter album was humbucker-free, recorded exclusively with guitars with single coils and P-90's.

Who makes the best P90 pickups? ›

The P90 (neck) pickup on this thing is extremely buzzy. Has a loud electronic buzz clean and applying any gain only makes it worse. Applying distortion makes it ridiculously loud to the point where it's undesirable to play on this pickup. It carries over quite a bit to the combo position (P90 + Humbucker).

P-90 pickups are of a different nature to humbuckers, despite their fairly similar-looking aesthetic . They only house the one pole piece, meaning P-90s are in essence, single coil pickups. They started out life used in classic Gibson guitars before the arrival of the humbucker in 1955.

Most pickups are wax potted from the factory, but even then some of them can develop microphonic problems. Fortunately, fixing a microphonic pickup is cheap and easy, so you don't have to throw away your bad pickup: just wax pot it!

Cheap pickups may be wound inconsistently, and this might cause a discrepancy in volume between them (on instruments that have more than one pickup). Pickups can act like microphones too, causing squealing and thumping noises. This is curable by 'potting' the pickup in wax.