Do prefer a P-90 in the bridge or neck position?

[Pickngrin]

I'm thinking of swapping one the humbuckers on my Hamer SATF for a P-90 (GFS Mean 90), but I'm not sure whether to do the bridge or neck.
Which would you pick and why?

Thanks

 

[sumitomo]

Both! Look at the P-rails. Sumi You can have a bucker in both and a 90 in both.:french

 

[Brian Krashpad]

The traditional wisdom seems to be neck P-90, bridge HB, such as in the Les Paul BFG model. That said, I personally would probably do it the other way round. That way you get the warmer less focused HB for your rhythm sound and the tighter more midrangey P-90 for solos.

 

[Tone2TheBone]

I love the sound of both in neck and bridge.

 

[jpfeifer]

This is a hard question. I have a guitar that has a P-90 in both positions. This one uses the Seymor Duncan Phat Cat pickups, which I really like (they're drop in replacements for normal sized humbuckers).

The bridge position gives you more of a snarl sound that is fantastic for dirty rhythm sounds. Listen to Steve Howe's guitar solos on the Roundabout record and you will hear lots of P90 bridge position tone. Other examples, listen to the guitar tones on the Beatles Revolver album, such as "Your Bird Can Sing". This is great example of that snarly sounding P90 bridge position tone.

The neck position P90 is one of my favorite tones for blues. The thing about P90's in general is that they're very sensitve to picking dynamics. The tone changes slightly if you pick harder versus softer. I really like to use the neck P90 for Santana-style solos. It seems to capture that tone even better than a humbucker, maybe because it's slightly warmer sounding.

--Jim

 

[red]

Indeed, conventional wisdom says put a P90 in the neck position if you're only going to use one P90. It does sound great there, but being a fan of the Telecaster/Les Paul Jr/Melody Maker twang, I really like the sound of a single coil in the bridge position. So I'd recommend swapping both pickups to P90s. Sumitomo might be on to something there, I've never tried P-rails pickups, but I've heard good things about them, so they might be a safer bet.

That being said, if your guitar can only suit humbucker-sized P90s, here's part of an email I got from Jason Lollar when I asked him about humbucker-sized P90s a while ago:

"Part of the tone of the P-90 is that it has a low wide coil. The coil is approximately ½" wide on each side of the pole pieces.
On a humbucker you only have about ¼" between the pole piece and the end of the pickup cover- a P-90 coil extends ½" beyond the end of each pole piece - the high e and the low e.

In order to make a single coil that fits you have to make the coil taller or wind it with a smaller diameter wire - (which is what I do) to keep the coil as low and wide as possible.

You loose midrange without the wide coil so all of these pickups have less midrange than a real P-90 to varying degrees. A tall coil will sound brighter than a lower wide coil too."

Not sure how keen you are to get the "original" P90 sound, but there you go. Hope this helps.

 

[Pickngrin]

Thanks for all of the input, guys. I'm still on the fence, but leaning toward trying the neck first...then if I like it, maybe I'll replace the bridge humbucker.

 

[markb]

Years ago I had a Jacobacci JS2 guitar which came with Benedetti P90-ish single coils. I replaced the slightly shrill bridge unit with a DiMarzio Super Distortion (I was young). This gave an almost perfect rhythm/lead blend with the neck single maintaining clarity for chordal work and the bridge HB driving the amp for leads.