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Main Description
Late 50s P90 – A Tried and Tested formula!
Right then – Late 50s P90, in a soap bar pattern! We’ve been making these things unmolested for years at this point, and they’ve not really changed, which Is kind of fitting – they’re an 8K coil of 42 AWG, sat atop two Alnico 5 bar magnets, screwed onto a brass base plate, and stuck inside an ABS cover.
They’re big, they’re brash, they’re aggressive, they don’t play particularly well with “other” pickups, so they’re best ring fenced and kept with their own kind.
P90s are fantastic fun, they’re a little bit niche by modern standards, but if you’ve got a guitar with P90s that’s in need of a bit of TLC, and you want something exceptional? Look no further!
Gibson®, Epiphone®, Fender®, Telecaster® and Tele® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Gibson Musical Instruments Corporation. Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC
Gibson® vs. "Epi®"
I can almost see the future with this one, and if i could put it in big, red, flashing letters i would.
The "Gibson®" Version of our P90 IS NOT "better" then the "Epiphone®" version - they are, in ever meaningful way, identical. Please, for my sanity, dont buy a Gibson® sized P90 and try fitting it into an Epiphone® - it, probably, wont fit.
This is because Gibson® use a different shape of Soap bar P90 cover to everyone else.
The difference between the two versions, is in the shape of the cover (not the size!). Gibson® use a 7.5mm radius in the covers of their covers/routes, where Epiphone® use 6mm - in short, Gibson® guitars are routed a little more curvy in the corners, where Epi® are a little squarer.
Honestly, most of the time, it wont make a blind bit of difference, and they'll be cross compatible, but having said that, there'll always be times when you've got to get it right (usually when the cover is meshing tight to a pickguard)
Also, when we say "Gibson®" and "Epiphone®" - its a little catch all - they're the most clearly defined examples of "this size fits this, that size fits that" - and whilst the Gibson® size seems to be pretty much exclusive to Gibson, the Epi® size will turn up on a whole host of guitar, not just Epiphone® - so, its worth measuring.
But, remember, its "Gibson® size" - there will be guitars out there, made small scale, with some hand wound, boutique P90, that have been specified up to be Gibson® size... its not a Gibson® guitar, but its using a Gibson® SIZE P90.
It is, frankly, confusing - so, please, measure the radius in the corners!
A very quick guide for spotting "Epi® size" Soap bars, is that they sometimes have a "lip" (so the top has a "round over with a top fillet") where a Gibson® wont - whilst its not a universal truth (our Epi® Size P90s lack the fillet, and look identical to the Gibson® version except the radius measurement) - if you see the lip, you know its an Epi® size your working with.
The Good & The Bad
Between you, me and the fence post, I'm more an engineer then i am a salesman, so to scratch that itch - I’m compelled to not only write up the unavoidable "hey, this pickup great! Play Rock or Blues?! This one’s for you!", but for the sake of balance, it’s only fair that i get to write up what they're not great at too (and because this section isn't "up front" - i get to be a bit more technical about it too! Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to explain what all those lovely buzz words actually mean eh?)
Remember too - whilst I’m writing this stuff about Axesrus pickups, its true of every pickup ever made. Even if you’re not buying ours, this stuff is handy! It’s all true! all pickups have characteristics that make them good or bad... there are no perfect pickups!
So, here we go - P90s- A pickup designed in the 1940s, when electric music was new, and a tone that somehow, survived through to the modern day - more an exercise in adaptability more then some tonal master class, but not without a hell of alot of pit falls and a few confusing aspects! Lets get stuck in!
So its 8K? Alnico 5? Just like everyone else?
Now, here’s the thing – whilst I’d love to sit here and do you a wonderful, flowery write up about how we’ve reinvented the wheel, and made a P90 that breaks the mould and turned the entire way we think about pickups on its head… we didn’t! And, honestly? No one really has – so I’m going to start this of with the one universal truth I always apply to P90s.
They all sound the same… or, more accurately, all the good ones do.
Gibson® came up with the idea back in the mid 1940s, way before electric guitars were really a thing, when they needed to make a pickup for their Lap steels (Fender® were doing the same thing on theirs too, those used an early version of a Tele® bridge pickup – Lap steels and pedal steels were huge back in the day!) – they took a bobbin, they stuck, roughly, about 8K of 42 AWG Plain enamel on it, sat it atop a couple of alnico bars, stuck some strings over the top and it sounded good!... so the idea stuck… and it never really changed. The same basic design ended up in the early Les Paul® models, it reappeared on the Les Paul® that was in fact, an SG® in the 60s, it appeared again on the ES330® under some fancy metal covers, they turned up on all the Juniors and Double cuts and who knows what else, and they were always, in terms of coil and magnet, pretty much the same as those lap steel pickups from 1940-odd! Always 8K and a pair of Alnico magnets.
So, that’s what everyone does, and, honestly? It works! Even to this day, if you’re chasing a P90 tone you recognise, you’re pretty much chasing that design original.
Now, the depressing thing about that, is this “Certain pickups lend themselves to certain styles of music”, and, ultimately, something like a P90, where we’ve NOT been exposed to them doing everything from Thrash Metal to Afro beat, have become VERY pigeon holed over the decades – they’re those pickups you buy if you want to play fatter country, twangier blues, or southern rock! (Or, they’re the pickups in the guitar you buy thinking it’ll play clean smooth jazz, and they blow your socks off, beat you over the head and you spend the rest of your life fighting them!)
So it ends up the perfect storm – P90s back in 1950, were great for the music of the time, which was Country! They were big and brash and spanking, hitting small amps at low volume, and the “country” at the time was showing early signs of becoming Rock N’ Roll and Jazz was still hanging around, but, really, its pretty clean cut country.
As amps got bigger, and Rock N’ Roll was replaced by Rock, the P90 faded from fashion and was replaced by the humbucker in most guitars, and it only appears sporadically from there on in, and never really changed their tone, and as such, never changed their specs.
So we’ve got this (and I can only apologise to any Mary Ford fans when I say this) “old fashioned” style of music as the main source of “this is what P90 do!” and the occasional Southern Rock or Blues band who are tearing it up with the things – and P90s sort of became synonymous with those 3 extremes. Country, Southern Rock, and a smattering of Blues – because that’s all we’ve ever really heard them do, all we’ve ever heard, have been those 8K Alnico P90s!
Now, this puts me in a difficult position, because, ultimately (as much as it might not seem it!), we are trying to sell you a P90 here, and, obviously, you’ve already got a P90 in your guitar, right? Why do you need a new one when your old ones are, seemingly, the same?
Honestly? You might not! I’m not going to sit here and try to sell you something you don’t need, but, remember, I said “all the good ones sound the same” – when I say “good ones” – its those 42 AWG coils, wound to 8K, with Alnico magnets. Now, truthfully? Even the cheap ones are pretty good, the ones wound with 0.06mm wire (or 46 SWG), they don’t induce as highly, and they lack the “punch” of the truly fantastic P90s… but they’re close enough!
The ”bad” ones, are the instances where someone has tried to reinvent the wheel, and dreamt up an 11K P90… it’s so foreign a tone that no one really likes it, we don’t recognise it! And we can’t apply it to that triumvirate of twang! It doesn’t Country, It doesn’t Southern Rock and it doesn’t Blues. That’s a bad P90! (Might be a good pickup in its own right, but its not doing what a P90 should – it has fallen out of the pigeon hole)
So, if your P90 shopping, do me a favour – know that 99.9% of them, are all going to do the same thing. If you hate your current pickup, run a multi-meter over it and see what the resistance is. See what the impedance is (should be somewhere between 6 and 7 Henrys – very hot!) – might be that your about to throw good money after bad on a new pickup, and if you’ve read this far? You might have just saved yourself!
Sadly, if you don’t like your current P90s? Options are limited, because your dealing with a weird routing. There are a few solutions, but, honestly? If you’ve got a P90 guitar, with good P90s, and you don’t like them? Might be worth exploring new guitars more then fighting the tide.
They DO NOT play well with others
Now we’ve addressed that particular elephant – lets get into the other wart on the hide of P90s (this is reading more like a “why are P90s not for me” rather then a “whats good? Whats bad” isn’t it?) – P90s do NOT play well with other pickups.
I think we’ve all seen them over the years – guitars with humbuckers in the bridge and a P90 in the neck, a Telecaster® converted to have P90s in the neck slot, even the odd Fat Strat® with a P90 in place of the bridge humbucker.
All, electrically, and tonally, utter car crashes!
P90s are these big, ballsy, bruising single coils, they’re loud (high inductance) they’re spiky, they’re aggressive, they’re prone to causing an amp to break up, and they’re very responsive – playing wise, you wont go far wrong by treating them with the same respect you’d approach a high output humbucker loaded into an Ibanez RG!
Now, that raises the main problem – P90s are so loud, and so aggressive, that you probably don’t want one in your Tele® neck slot any more then you’d want a Super Distortion® or an X2N®! Its going to be too much in comparison to the “true” single coil, and you’re never going to get them to pair up all that well on the same amp settings.
And its not just limited to single coils vs. P90s either – Humbuckers struggle to keep up! Your average “vintage” humbucker is going to be way quieter and much brighter then a P90 – perversely, if you do insist on mixing and matching, your safer trying to pair a P90 with a high output humbucker (Our Hot Iron is 7H, the same as the Late 50s P90, which gives you some indication of what’s going on electrically as well as tonally)
Now, that puts you in a weird situation, where you’ve got a pickup that wants to do 1950s jazz inspired country-tinged early rock and roll (or twangy blues rock, which is more likely nowadays I suppose!) and then a humbucker that wants to tear your ears off whilst you run through sweep picked arpeggios. I’m not saying you can’t use a High gain humbucker for Country, and I’m not saying you cant use a P90 for metal… but I bet that’s not what you set our for when you bought the guitar with such a weird pickup combo in.
So, go in eyes open – P90s can be paired with other pickups (more on that in “matched sets”) – but, options, very quickly, become limited. The best you’ll hear a P90, is in a guitar with only P90s. Embrace that idea, and you wont go far wrong.
So... they're not very good?
The mad thing is, for all i can sit here, shouting at clouds about how P90s are outdated, have limited scope of variation, and we only have a very small sample size of "music made with P90s" to base our opinions on - they're an absolutely amazing pickup! They sound absolutely nothing like you imagine if your coming from a single coil background, and they sound nothing like you imagine coming from a humbucker background! They're loud, aggressive, forgiving, rough and abrassive, with an almost throaty aspect to them thats such a breath of fresh air compared to a humbucker that they're very easy to fall madly in love with, and never want to put down.
The reason for that unique tone, is all down to the design of the things - a P90 is characterised by being a very wide, very short coil (always 8K), with steel poles, sat atop 2 bar magnets, and that gives a low capatisense at a high inductanc - in the best P90s (and without a hint of ego, i'd class the Late 50s in that league!) your dealing with 42 AWG plain enamel, which helps rinse out every last ounce of guts from the signal, and retains the punch and scratch you'll come to love from this style of pickup.
I mentioned earlier that "even the cheap ones are pretty good", and thats very true - but the main difference between a £70 P90 and a £20 one, is the coil wire - forget the base material, forget the magnets, it makes very little difference to the final ton, its all in the coil wire, if that 5% "this is better then that" matters to you? You want the 42 AWG (the cheaper versions will be using metric/0.06mm wire, which pushes the resonsonant peak away from where it should be, and robs a little of the power, and definition as a result)
Matched Set?
I normally try to give atleast a few weird and whacky options in the "matched set" section of these write ups, but i'm going to struggle with P90s frankly - as alluded to in "the good and the bad" section, P90s (ours included) are so "big" (read that as loud and aggressive) that the pickups they pair well with, aren't really in keeping with the whole "more aggressive country" thing P90s are synonymous with - but, i'll give it my best, but be warned - this might be a short list.
So, lets get the easy stuff out of the way first.
P90s
Want to know what matches up with a P90? You guessed it - its another P90! Be it another Axes P90, or anyone elses (they're all the same remember?) Get a Neck and a Bridge and be done with it - thats your best bet of getting an absolutely fantastic sounding guitar. P90s all the way down.
P90s - Neck vs. Bridge
Its worth nothing too, that whilst you can order a Neck and Bridge version of this pickup, they are, identical - a neck is a bridge, a bridge is a neck- its purely listed as different positions to avoid raising questions from folk who've not read this section. P90s, normally, aren't reverse wound in the neck/bridge compared to the opposite pickup. The way P90s are built, the magnets have a habit of interfering with the opposite pickup, and as a result, it can sound a bit odd (even when only one of the pickups is live)
We offer a reverse wound/reverse polarity BRIDGE in the drop down, if you insist on having a hum cancelling/correctly phased "both on" position, but, for me? Dont - go for the pair without reverse winding, because the pickups sound better individually. Your working with 1940s technology - embrace the weird quirks. Theres some magic hiding in them.
Now, if your not lucky enough to be dealing with a pair of P90s? Lets get stuck into the mismatches.
Bridge pickups (Late 50s P90 in Neck)
Humbuckers
Hot Iron - About the best you can hope for in terms of Humbucker vs. P90 - it'll match in terms of volume, it'll work on similar amp settings, but, it's a bit broad, and, without poo-pooing this style of pickup, its a bit "mid rich/Honky"... but as long as you dont take the mick? It'll do Rock and Blues. If your insisting on a humbucker to pair with any P90? It'll either be a Hot Iron, or it'll be pretty close to it.
Telecaster®
T90 - This is a weird one - the T90 was initially designed to give P90 tones out of a Telecaster® bridges single coil, and... it does (check out the bode plots) - everything a P90 does, the T90 bridge does. Big, brash and broad. On a short list thats going to have an awful lot of "if you insist on being daft..." this ones a rare "these two make a really good pair!"
Also, the T90, being higher inductance, plays well on 500k pots, which is what you want for your equally high inductance P90.
Stratocaster®
If you've got a Strat® with a P90 in the neck, and your hankering after a single coil to pair with it, i'm sorry, but I've absolutely nothing to suggest - your asking an awful lot of a single coil (based on its size and shape) to even get close to the inductance of a P90. I'd be more inclined to redesign the layout, going for something either dual P90, or, at a push, HB bridge.
Neck Pickups (P90 in Bridge)
Humbuckers
Ethereal - again, its not ideal, and we're getting into the realms of silly designs, but, if you can live with the idea of having a very big, creamy, fluidic "lead" pickup in the neck slot to pair with your brash, badly behaved twangy P90 work horse in the bridge? The Ethereals about the only thing i'd be happy suggesting. The Hot Irons going to get a little too "lardy" for most people, so i'd avoid that personally. Again, its not the best pairing, but if your working on a weird guitar? Its about your only hope.
Stratocaster® & Telecaster®
I cant be much help here either i'm afraid - same logic as for a P90 neck - they're just so loud that no single coils going to give you enough i'm afraid. Thankfully, this guitar doesn't really exist.
Bode Plots
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Swap Graphs?
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Pickup #1
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Pickup #2
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Setup
500k pots work perfectly (thats what was used on the recordings for reference) and a 0.022 or a 0.047 cap on the tone will see you absolutely fine - you can try a 300k tone pot if you like, but i've never felt it made much of a difference myself.
Dont fall into the "myth" with P90s and think "hey, they're single coils - single coils go on 250s!" - P90s ARE single coils, but they induce so highly, that, really, you want to be treating them in the same way you would humbuckers.
Warranty & Returns
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to write this section up, and, I really wish I didn’t have to, but, if I’m being honest and transparent about how pickups work, for better or worse, it’s probably worth being honest and open your rights as a consumer too, and maybe give a little insight into how we actually build pickups.
How we do it
Pickups, at our end of things – are “Custom made” – I cannot stress this enough. When you click the “Add To Cart” button, there is no pickup on the shelf, no bucket of pre-terminated bobbins or half complete pickups. It is made, entirely, from scratch using the parts we have available.
This means, if you order a Bourbon city, or a Hot Iron, or a Texas Blue, it is wound FOR YOU. It is being built to the specifications you have stipulated in the drop-down menus, even the most “normal” design, is still, essentially, built to order.
That entails our pickers collecting the parts from stores, delivering them to the winders, who then get the copper on there, and then the wound coils going to the techs to solder, terminate, test, polish, wax pot, clean, retest… you get the idea.
This is all done “in house” and, obviously, there is a queue, which is first in first out, so pickups will NEVER be shipped same day. Realistically, it takes about 2 weeks, but we do get busier at the beginning/end and middle of the month, so that can have a knock on effect.
And this is all being done, by hand, on a VERY small scale. At maximum, we can produce about 6 pickups a day.
It works wonderfully frankly, because we can make, pretty much, anything you can dream up, and keeping it small scale, means we have an exceptionally high attention to detail with each pickup sold.
Returns
So we have an item, when all is said and done, that didn’t exist until you purchased it, that has cost a lot of man hours to actually manufacture, and has been manufactured to your exact specifications.
As such, pickups come under the remit of “custom work” as laid out under the our terms and conditions, and as outlined in the UK governments distance selling regulations.
This means, in short, pickups are none returnable, and none refundable.
I understand, in this day and age, that may seem quite the hard-nosed approach, but, sadly, there’s no wiggle room in this. Once a pickup is wound, there’s no going back. It belongs to you. There is no “I’ll test it to see if I like it” or “I’ll return it if I don’t like the colour!”.
Warranty
All Axesrus pickups come with a “relaxed lifetime” warranty as far as I’m concerned. I’m never going to ask you to register the purchase, stop offering support 12 months after purchase or limit support to the initial customer in the case of second-hand stuff. We are incredibly proud of the pickups we produce, and I’ll help out wherever I can.
However, its worth laying out what I’d consider “realistic” expectations as to what we will cover as part of a warranty.
Repairs and replacements
Whilst we will not accept pickups as return for refund under any circumstances, we reserve the right to repair or replace any pickup that develops a manufacturing fault within a reasonable time frame.
I won’t put a scale on that time frame, but I will say, its at our discretion. If you’re lucky enough to have some of the VERY early hand wound stuff we made, and we (stupidly) thought we could do it at £20 a pickup, and the coil wires snapped after 10 years? I’m probably not in a position to repair or replace it free of charge, you know? You’ve had your fun; you’ve got your money’s worth!
On the flip side of that – if you’ve bought a £200 humbucker 2 years ago, and it’s developed a fault? You’d better believe Axes is bending over backwards to get it repaired and get you up and running again.
I’ll say this too, we won’t hang you out to dry – if that £20 pickup can be repaired, even if we’re not doing it as part of the warranty, we will offer to repair it at a reasonable price.
Damage vs. Fault
Pickups are delicate creatures I’m afraid. Nature of the beast I suppose, they were never designed, all those years ago, to be “presented” outside of a guitar, so go in knowing this, pickups can be damaged. Either in transit, whilst in storage, or during install.
It is VERY difficult to know how a pickup has developed a fault, so most of the time, we will go into all warranty claims with the mindset that “it’s a manufacturing fault”, frankly, because it keeps everyone happy, avoids any awkward conversations as to “who’s done what” and, normally, repairing damage done during install is the same work as repairing a manufacturing fault either way. Worst case, we might have a delicate email exchange about who’s covering the postage, but that’s about as bad as it gets.
However, we will take this approach only when a pickup, which is showing damage, is only showing minimal damage. I appreciate everyone makes mistakes.
Pickups that have been heavily damaged, have seen heavy wear and tear, or have been intentionally broken in an effort to raise a warranty claim, will see not be repaired, or replaced. Neither free of charge or “for a fee”
Lead times and cancellations
We do publish the lead times on all of our custom build work, and there is very little we can do to decrease the time it takes to actually manufacture this stuff I’m afraid, short of jumping you to the front of the queue (which is never fair, and we won’t do it)
Be aware that once an order is placed, work beings on your build, and as such, you’ve entered into the contract, and there is no backing out. Coils can often be wound within the hour or the order being placed, but they will sit in the work queue due to a back log at terminating/testing/cleaning.
Modifications
There are, occasionally, situations where someone buys a pickup, installs it, plays it for a while, and then might want something a little different down the line. Maybe a different magnet, or a cover fitting, or a new hookup wire fitting.
I am happy to carry out this work, and, normally, regardless of the “time since purchase”, this will be done simply for the cost of parts and postage.
However, the “depth” of these modifications, and if we’re willing/capable of carrying them out, is at the discretion of Axesrus. We’re happy to discuss this on a case-to-case basis, but go in eyes open, that its unlikely to be part of the warranty.
“Warranty with initial purchase”
I’m not a stickler when it comes to this stuff, but I will say, we do have to draw the line somewhere, so, strictly speaking, this “relaxed warranty” is, officially, limited to the original purchaser of the product.
That said, I’m not a robot, nor am I a fool. I’m aware that sometimes, a pickup is moved on relatively quickly, or is bought by a 3rd party for someone else, so, in these cases, lets just be sensible about it. I’ll carry forward a “true” warranty on a pickup for 12 months after the initial purchase, regardless of who is contacting me in regards to any issue.
However, I will need to know who the initial customer was. Even if it’s just their name and a rough date of purchase.
This goes for technical support too – I’ve no problems offering support on Axesrus products, regardless of “time since purchase”, but I will ask for some proof that they are in fact, Axesrus products.
Modifications to second hand parts, will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis too.
Changes in specification/tolerances
Over the years, we’ve had a few “interesting” conversations regarding pickup specifications, especially when it comes to returns and warranty.
The published specs of our pickups, are published with a “within tolerance” subtext, based off of the readings from our testing equipment.
There will, always, be variation between one pickup and the next, and whilst we endeavor to keep those readings within the tolerances stated, they do occasionally wander outside of the 10% we stipulate as “acceptable” – this is usually due to temperature fluctuation, or specification changes outside of our control (wire diameter, alloy composition etc.) – any resulting change in readings based on these factors, will result in an updated technical spec on the website, but, as you can imagine, the first we know about an unforeseen spec change, is when the pickups come off the winder.
We do not consider these “out of spec” accidents to be cause for a warranty claim I’m afraid, and we endeavor to keep on top of them so the information we’re giving you at point of purchase, is as accurate as possible.
Warranty postage
Repairs or replacement postage cost, outside of an initial 14 day period, is at your cost. I appreciate, in some situations, that this is prohibitive (especially when shipping outside of the UK).
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