Lollar El Rayo vs P90 (Or H sized p90)

Finally a question I can answer from experience. My Jazzbo Hepcaster had an El Rayo originally. I found it too bright with the 500k pots. Changed to 250k and still too bright (maybe it was the pine body and maple neck). Anyway, swapped it for a TV Jones T90 (humbucker-sized P90) and couldn't be happier.

When I was shopping I looked at the Mean 90...can't remember why I decided against it. Actually came very close to ordering it, then I learned something about it that turned me off. I highly recommend the T90. It can do a P90-ish brightness, but the bottom end warms it up nicely and it can sound fat and jazzy with the tone rolled back.

Here's some before and afters of my build (pretty much happy with it now, except the knobs still aren't quite right) :

 

You can get a great “thick twang” out of a p90 with the right amp and settings. No experience with mean 90s, but my phat cat also has a cover. It’s a bit darker than you might want for tele sounds but it could work fine.

 

All the good P90s I've had have always been A2. Reading your posts though it now sounds like you are after a really bright snappy tone and I'm not sure P90s are the best vehicle to get that. The kind of "country" sound that I like to use P90s for is like a steel guitar sound - round and clean, soft attack. A normal amount of treble. It sounds like what you really want it a snappy, toppy tele pickup though. I know that Lollar and probably some others package a true tele pickup in a HB size format, that might be what you really need.

 

Well, here’s where we diverge...I built mine for jazz so I wanted warmer.

 

Haven’t used the El Rayo but we often wire a P-90 with a bass cut in the bridge position instead of a traditional tone control. Seems to work to get a tele-like tone. Might be worth a try with your existing setup?
Paul

 

I've got Fralin P-92 bridge. It's bright, humbucker sized P-90 ish and noiseless too. It could have even more mids to my taste, mine's stock wound and I'm using 500K pots. It can be ordered overwound too, so hotter with more mids.

Fralin got also Twangmasters, even treblier and twangier Tele style pickups with similar structure.

 

I had a strat with El Rayos in it and I've own guitars with P90s, but I've never had them in the same guitar. My general feeling is that El Rayos didn't sound like a P90 to my ear, or at least not the antiquities I owned. They could sound like a low output PAF if you picked gently, but they got a crunch if you dug in and hit the strings hard. I thought they were good pickups, but not good enough that I kept the very decent guitar that they were in.

I don't really think any humbucker sized P90s sound like a P90 in general. That's not to say they sound bad, I really like the sound one of the guitarists from the Strokes gets with hollowbody guitars and Gibsons humbucker sized P90.

 

I do think the Phat Cat sounds like a darker P90, probably because of the cover. Otherwise I agree. SC-sized pickups never sound like a p90.

 

Rod magnets in an HB size "P90" pickup will get you more in the Tele zone than the same kind of pickup with bar magnets.

This is the one I use, and it sounds somewhere between a P90 and a Fender single coil in the neck (haven't heard it in the bridge yet):

https://www.manliusguitar.com/collections/humbuckers/products/fat-goat-r-90

 

I'd recommend trying a SD P-Rails. Great vintage P90, blade single coil and heavier hummer tones. Running the two coils parallel gives a lighter brighter tone that will crunch up later on the dial.