Mixing P90's and singles

[uxter]

Hi

My first post here and I hope I dont offend any purists, I am setting off on my project guitar which may cause a few furrowed brows I am sure, but before I get into the nitty gritty I have a question. I do love Strat pos 2 & 4 sounds, so they are a must, I also like P90's and have been toying with using one in the neck position, maybe even the bridge, although I am pretty sure I will be using a tappable humbucker there.

Soooooo when you mix a P90 neck and a single coil middle, does it work? will it do a passable out of phase tone? has anyone done it?

Now heres the rest of the guitar, I have a relicced JM body from Mark Jenney at MJT, Lake Placid Blue, My neck is a Highway 1 Strat neck, r/w board, I intend to use a combo of JM and Jag scratchplates and control plates. It will have a full graph tech Ghost system, midi and acoustic and it will have a Floyd Rose trem, I will use the existing trem plate (trimmed or moved further back, which will be a cheap relicced part) to either carry some switches or hide some wiring...depending on what else gets put in there (I havent ruled out a sustainer system yet) so as you can see its quite an individual guitar.

I already have a tele with a chambered warmoth body, relicced with a Highway 1 Strat neck, HSH (Rio Grandes....need to swap the neck pickup!) and a Kahler locking trem, but my first guitar was a godawful JM copy and I love the shape, but I need a versatile guitar and I dont like them looking all shiny and new, cos I am a bit of a poser!

I am tempted by all manner of switching possibilities, but in reality the tele does everything I like apart from I miss the single coil neck tone, I have it on a mega switch which give me bridgeh/b, split bridge and middle, two outer coils (ala tele) middle and split neck, then full neck HB (a mistake that last one for me!)

But I feel a place for some P90 action. When I play live I use exclusively the Roland Gr55 for both synth and modelled tones, so I can have as cool looking a guitar as I want.

Any opinions gratefully received.

Alan

[Sinuata]

Hi, I'm definitely not the best person here to answer this question, but I noticed your post seemed to slip under the radar, so consider this a bump.
Don't worry; I'm sure nobody will be offended by your plans. This is the mods section, after all.
Of course the best thing to do is try & see for yourself. But I'll speculate.
I think you can get at least a bit of that 2/4-type sound* from almost any two pickups, provided one doesn't overpower the other, and the spacing is right. But I think it works best when the two pickups are similar in construction. I also think pickups that focus on a narrow section of string work better than pickups that sense a wider span of string, which means magnetic pole pieces will work better than slugs, and tall narrow coils might work better than short wide coils (not sure about that one, though). So that's why strat pickups have such a distinctive 2/4 sound. Two P90s together, not so much, and my hunch is that strat+P90 wouldn't give very much either. You'd probably get better results with the split-coil humbucker + strat pickup combo. Again, I may be completely wrong.
Seymour Duncan makes some pickups called P-rails which have a rail single coil and P-90 side-by-side in a humbucker-sized casing. I have one in one of my guitars, and it won't give you the greatest strat and P90 sounds you've ever heard, but it gets the job done. With one of those in the neck position and a regular strat pickup in the middle you could have your neck P-90 plus a decent stratty Neck+Mid sound and still keep your bridge humbucker. May be worth considering.

* It's not uncommon for people to call the normal strat 2/4 sound "out of phase", but it's not really correct electrically, and when you're talking about pickup wiring it can cause confusion sometimes.

[noisepunk]

This is also a pretty wordy post- I notice people tend to miss the question when there's a lot of backstory.

I personally have no idea- I get some variation of that sound on my jazzmaster's middle position, so I know it's not an exclusively strat sound. Similar output is probably necessary, other than that I think you just need two single coils (a p90 is a single coil) that are wound in opposite directions- i'm guessing that the reason a telecaster or humbucker'd guitar won't sound 'out of phase' is because their pickups are wound in the same direction (or in the case of a humbucker, wound in both directions).

[Ceylon]

Middle + neck pickup, regardless of pickup type, give the middle + neck sound. THe closer the pickup configuration is to a strat, the more of that sound you'll have, but in a strat type guitar, I don't think it matters if you have a P90 instead of a typical strat single coil - it won't be exactly the same, but close, close.

[BillClay]

I can't offer any advice, I just wanted to say that this guitar you're building sounds amazing and I'd certainly love to see pictures of what you've got, finished or not.

[noisepunk]

Middle + neck pickup, regardless of pickup type, give the middle + neck sound. THe closer the pickup configuration is to a strat, the more of that sound you'll have, but in a strat type guitar, I don't think it matters if you have a P90 instead of a typical strat single coil - it won't be exactly the same, but close, close.

Not entirely true, if they're wound in the same direction the in-between position will louder and stronger, as opposed to kind of phasey.

[ohm-men]

A P-90 is in fact a single coil, just wound broader and with Two magnets (though some strat coils are constructed alike)
So, when mixing them, the same rule aplies as with single coils. So, best is a Reverse Wound/Reverse polarity pu.
Most neck pu's (even P-90's) are north polarity, where most bridge pu's are South polartity. ( To put it to a test, if Pu's atract when pole pieces are facing eachoter, then both pu's have a different polarity, if they don't, then they have the same polarity and are most likely wound in the same direction, thus phase canceling in the middle/both on position)

I've mixed P-90 with Jm pu's, Jag pu's, strat pu's etc. Even if both pu's have the same polarity, then swapping the ground and hot lead of one of both pu's usually takes care of the out of phase middle position. (for isstance MIJ/CIJ Jag pu's are both south polarity pu's, but the coid windings are different, some prefer this, others don't. I can't really hear a difference between these)

The only downside to single coils (esp on P-90's and Jm pu, is the fact they are somewhat noisy, so shielding the guitar is usually a good idea.)

Mixing Alnico and ceramic single coils is also not a problem (most cheap P-90's are ceramic). Depending on the pots you use (either 250 K, 500K, or 1 Meg, the ceramics will sound darker then the Alnico's ore vice virsa, but I never considered this a problem either.)

[Ceylon]

Middle + neck pickup, regardless of pickup type, give the middle + neck sound. THe closer the pickup configuration is to a strat, the more of that sound you'll have, but in a strat type guitar, I don't think it matters if you have a P90 instead of a typical strat single coil - it won't be exactly the same, but close, close.

Not entirely true, if they're wound in the same direction the in-between position will louder and stronger, as opposed to kind of phasey.

But isn't reverse-wired middle pickups on strats something fairly new? I had one a few years ago where they were wound in the same direction and I'd say that was very close to the classic Stratocaster sound.

[EdGrip]

Indeed - I might be talking nonsense here, but I think the in-between sounds on strats are to do with the combination of two coils at that distance from each other. People like to call the in-between positions the "out-of-phase" positions, although they're not, and this probably adds confusion. The middle coil on strats was not historically RW/RP. RW/RP is not relevant to the quack, though it will make the guitar noise-free when both coils are on.*
Strats originally had 3-way switches which allowed you to simply select the pickup you wanted. People found that if you jammed the switch in-between so that both pickups were on, the sound was cool. Later on, Fender started fitting 5-way switches in response to this trend.

Being as a P90 is a single coil - albeit constructed differently from a strat pickup - and the two pickups are in the right places, I imagine that the combo you describe would get you that sound. Only thing to do is try it and see! Your post has me wondering about a 3-pickup Jazzmaster...

Creston Lea of Creston Guitars feels that the sound of a strat middle pickup is dull, and only has worth when it is being used with the bridge or neck pickups to make THAT sound. We must assume that Paul Simon feels otherwise.

- Ed

*Some - including Johnny Marr - say that a guitar without RW/RP pickups sounds better because all of the magnets are pulling (or pushing) the same way on the strings, rather than pulling and pushing at different points.

[EdGrip]

I should add that this is a sound I envy. Sometimes I consider putting another pickup in there...

[ohm-men]

Indeed, I think we discussed the 3 Pu Jazzmaster a few years ago. One formite started measuring and the distance between the two Jm pu's allows a third one, as if the guitar was desinged with this idea...
Mel Waldorf made at least one or two 3 JM Pu Jazzmasters, which he used in his various Surf bands (Los Meltones, etc)
These sounded very nice...Not sure if he still uses them though.(I think he still regulary post here from time to time)

As Pu wise, I "think" he used Duncans, two Bridge pu's and one neck pu (or vice versa) Bridges went into the neck and bridge position, while the neck one went into the middle position. Not sure how he wired it or if he used "out of phase". (Should be on his site)

[uxter]

Thanks everyone for your considered replies, I really appreciate them, I also take on board the comments about wordy posts, I am a singer foremost, guitarist, writer, afterwards so hence the waffle.

I will indeed get some photos up, when its closer to completion, I am glad I found this place, my first guitar was one of those awful Woolworths copies, somewhere between a Jaguar and a Jazzmaster, it obviously left its mark!

I will post some of the Tele when I work out how to do that, I love that guitar, but I hate how flimsy the stock Roland GK pickup is, hence the built in Ghost version planned, I am not a great fan of the Kahler I have on the Tele either, tuning is rock solid, but I miss that springy tone that a trad/Floyd brings to a guitar.

I am not a voracious trem user, but once tuned my locking trems dont go out of tune all night, despite my prancing, sweating, flouncing about and occasional knockings over! I would never use a proper shiny guitar live!

cheers

Alan

[uxter]

lets see if this works then!



or this!
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dont know what I am doing wrong here, possibly the prob is with how I am using photobucket...!

try this one!

http://s1150.photobucket.com/albums/o612/uxters/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[pp1d00d00]

THAT is a BEAST OF GLORY!!!
that thing-from-fantastic-4 checking! that antibiotic resistant strain of 3 double d buckle rash! that lit of fire hair metal floyd rose trem!
it's burned into my mental retina for good now... FANTASTIC!!!

[Leviman]

lets see if this works then!



or this!

to many img tags! i fixed it