p-90s, tricks for better sound?

[phdinfunk]

I grew up playing a cheap Telecaster knock off my parents got me when I was a kid. In my late teens and early twenties, I started playing bass guitar, then in college I veered into synths. Now, after almost 7 years away from playing anything with strings, I've built myself a neato little guit-box.

I got Curtis Novak to build me a goldfoil pickup and a p-180 (p-90 with coil tap to massively overwound). I put them in an Indonesian Basswood Jazzmaster Body with a MIM reverse Standard Strat Neck. I'm playing through a Sansamp Blonde. P-90 is bridge, Goldfoil is Neck.

The P-90 sounds cool in a sense. Without distortion, the intro to Sweet Home Alabama sounds infinitesimally close to the recording. With distortion, I can pretty much hit "I love Rock and Roll" or with more gain, I can play "Aqualung" and it sounds close to the recording.

When I play chords though, I notice that I get a lot of nasal honkiness from that pickup. It's making me feel like I'm going a little crazy. I can pick and strum further from the bridge and that helps a bit (right near the bridge is absurdly nasal). I can back off the gain a touch. I can set the "Character" knob closer to the bassy side (too much into "Tweed" territory and it gets obscenely nasal).

I'm wondering if there are any standard tricks, amps, effects, etc that people use with p-90s to tone down the nasal quality? I LOVE the fact that it's so freaking responsive to everything I do. I feel like I breathe and this pickups hears it. It's making me play guitar better than I've ever played before. It's cool in so many ways. I want to love this pickup. However, I don't like that strong nasal resonance it has. What do you do about it?

--Jonathan

[uriah1]

Screw height is everything in P90's..also, 60's gibby wiring

[phdinfunk]

Alright, this is helpful. Thank you.

So, I should wire the volume pots so that if the volume of one is at zero, and I put the switch in the middle, no sound will come out (because the output is connected to center lug rather than the pickup). Is that correct? Or is there another important aspect to this kind of sound?

Also, dagger, the pickups Curtis made me fit into a jazzmaster and don't have pole height adjustment. Maybe I could send it back to him and get that fixed. I see no reason he couldn't use adjustable poles instead of the fixed rods in there.

If I were going to send it back, does Alnico II have less mid-range resonance than five, or anything along those lines?

[Telenator]

Seems like you have a great sounding guitar there.

The nature of P90's is that signature midrange honk. It's what makes them sound so cool in a lot of songs.

You might just consider getting a new guitar with a different style pickup set in it. Something that covers a new range of sounds very well.

One can never have too mnay guitars!

[jkingma]

The best way to get better sound from a P90 is to install them.

P90s are my favourite pickups. I've installed them in a lot of guitars I've built... but I don't currently have a guitar at home with P90s in it. I've got to do something about that real soon.

[Leep Dog]

I didn't have any GAS until yesterday when I played a Gibson Les Paul special with P-90s. Wow, what a nice guitar and what a great sounding guitar. I want one.

[winny pooh]

The underwound tap should have less mids. Do you have it on a swtch?