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Post by DerAlex on Dec 13, 2017 7:57:48 GMT
P90s are Da Bomb - you just gotta love them. Here´s my beauty LP Junior style guitar - will soon get a new P90 from Craig Vineham. This beauty weighs 3kg and it´s a shame that HB doesn´t produce a nice lightweight Junior or LP special version with P90s in it. Good for FGN - bad for us.
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Post by DerAlex on Dec 13, 2017 9:54:26 GMT
Unfortunately at the neck there is no routing at all DefJef. I was speculating installing another P90 there. So I need a LP Special at some time in the future. The interesting thing about that guitar is that the bridge allows stringing both string-through-body and "classic". So it looks like a mix between a Tele and a LP Junior. I really love that guitar although the Seymour Duncan Vintage P90 is too tame for my liking. Too Tele-esque - I will upgrade with a more gritty sounding P90 at the end of the year.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2017 11:48:31 GMT
Im in LOVE with those Wilkinson P90's that come with the TE-90QM guitar Must have that one again, only hope they come with a solid body construction and a neck that is less modern D shape and more Strat rounded!
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Post by DerAlex on Dec 13, 2017 12:40:27 GMT
Wonder if they've gone over to Roswells on that TE-90QM now? At least on the german site ;-) this is the case for the JA-60 (but not the TE-90QM - sorry I overlooked the TE90 part ): www.thomann.de/de/harley_benton_hb_ja_60_ow.htmNow Thomann, please make that guitar as a non-offset one and I will immediately buy (again).
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Post by DerAlex on Dec 13, 2017 12:47:28 GMT
We are all such different players that your experience illustrates exactly why we should never leap in with suggestions for guitars and pickups. Whilst you want a hotter P90 I was searching for the weakest ones! Perhaps we should start a Swap Shop site. I'm encouraged to hear that a weaker P90 sounds Tele-esque. That's my sound. I completely agree on this one with our own taste for gear - I only recommend what I like and that doesn´t need to match anyone else´s taste. I had this experience quite recently with a debate over the Tubemeister 5 amp. I love that little amp for blues rock and clean tones. But for me it doesn´t take overdrive/distortion pedals at all. I really hate that sound (on top of that I also hate the drive channel on the TM5 as well). But others on the same thread said that the TM5 takes pedals really well. So who is right now!? And especially regarding pickups: sometimes people just look at the resistance but let me tell you that with 9.2K this Seymour Duncan P90 is IMHO already really hot if you look just at the resistance. My replacement pickup will actually have less resistance (Bluesdog bridge): www.vineham.com/p90_pickups.htmlSo I am really curious how this will turn out (as Craig said I will get more grit with it). Ready to learn (again).
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Dec 13, 2017 13:08:54 GMT
Right on DerAlex. By all accounts inductance measured in Henries is a greater signifier of a pickup's performance yet it is awfully hard, usually impossible, to find on a seller's website. Then again, suppliers' websites are awfully suspect. Just look at Gibson's. I notice they are still describing their mini humbucker as being famous for sitting in the Firebird despite exchanging several emails with them over 18 months ago and their admitting that this is totally wrong and that they do not sell a Firebird pickup as a standalone object. They did say they would update the site but...well even a blue whale can't hold its breath for that long.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Dec 13, 2017 13:30:42 GMT
This is some advice I am quoting from a professional musician/technician of over 45 years standing <EDITED 'COS I CONFUSED DerAlex >: "If we know the resistance (ohms), AND the inductance (Henrys), we can calculate the frequency response. By knowing the peak and where it sits in the spectrum of frequencies the guitar produces we can make generalizations about it's output relative to other frequencies, but cannot say anything about it's overall output, since we have no information in about the Gauss measurements of the magnets.
Furthermore - the output and frequency response of the GUITAR's circuitry has just as dramatic an impact on timbre and output as the pickup. The resistance of the volume control has a huge effect on how the guitar sounds. The tone pot and bypass cap do as well.
So, in short, anyone who tells you what pickup you want based on resistance is basically, .....(you decide what you want to put here)
And face it, pots can have a lot more effect on how a guitar sounds than pickups. Are your pickups dull, wooly and lack definition? Instead of changing pickups, maybe you need to increase the resistance of the volume pot. Putting another brand pickup in there won't fix the problem. You'll just have an expensive wooly, dull, pickup. Then you'll get tired of the guitar and sell it, when all it may have needed was change to the circuitry.
Unfortuantely, pickup manufacturers sell snake oil and have the vast majority of players convinced a new pickup will:
1) make you a better player 2) make your guitar play better 3) make you amp sound better
I know what will come next. A few of the people here who know me will point out that I am an endorser for some of the most expensive, handbuilt boutique "superpickups" available on the market today. True. But ask me about them and I always tell everyone they will make a great guitar sound even better, but will not make a so-so one sound great, and no pickup in the wold will make a poor amp sound great.
Pickups, are the very last thing you change in your rig. Not the first. All the other foundation has to be there or the pickup change is not going to make a real difference. Get things sounding good in you chain and amp, and then fine-tune with pups. But don't expect pickups to completely change how you sound."A salutary lesson.
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Post by DerAlex on Dec 13, 2017 15:22:56 GMT
DefJef: So true, even as a noob player I can confirm what you are saying. I changed almost all pickups in all guitars I have/had and all of them sounded different. But not necessarily "better". My personal preference for example in LP type guitars is 50s wiring. And if you start a discussion on that (vs. modern wiring) you open a can of worms almost as big as the tonewood debate. The same goes with pedals: I bought a lot of them already and find them not very useful at all - besides the clean boost from Kokko. Could be because my amp is the above mentioned Tubemeister 5 but anyway. On this Junior above I started experimenting with a treble bleed and different cap/resistor values and that is when a complete new world opened up. I guess the wiring and its components can really lift the guitar too a completely different level (up or down) and then there is the amp (and cables, pickup heights, ...) This is what I really find refreshing that I don´t need to llok out for the next guitar to buy but my tinkering creativity can go into understanding how to improve existing gear. Besides improving as a guitar player by practicing - but that is the boring part, right!? Anyway, to be completely off topic: which pickups do you endorse? (didn´t know that before)
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3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on Dec 13, 2017 16:18:55 GMT
I agree too. Most pickups can be made to sound good with adjustment in height or resistor/cap/circuitry changes.
One thing that does differentiate cheaper from more expensive pups though is that the cheaper ones are more likely to be microphonic (because the mechanical aspects haven't been cared for sufficiently). However, microphonic pickups may be exactly what you want for your tone - i.e. microphonic is not always bad. (Just like hollow body feedbacking guitars are not 'bad')
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Post by universalgleam on Jan 31, 2018 0:45:29 GMT
I've just ordered one of these. I went with B-stock in the vain hope that it will have had a second quality check on return, so let's see what happens.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2018 7:02:25 GMT
I've just ordered one of these. I went with B-stock in the vain hope that it will have had a second quality check on return, so let's see what happens. LOL "extra check" I ordered a B-stock TE90 FLT thinking like you just to receive a guitar with a misplaced bridged and a kitchen sponge as a protection for the toggle switch let me tell you, No One QCed that B stock guitar at Thomann that's bloody sure That said many did receive very fine B stocks indeed. You might also be the lucky one!
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