Les Paul Pickup Question

[soupbone]

The P-90 sounds killer!I just got to find a bridge pickup that will balance out with that one.Maybe a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates?or,a Gibson 500T,like the one Angus Young uses in his SG's.

The Pearly Gates isn't much hotter than a standard Gibson humbucker, but the 500T is a hot ceramic pickup.  I've never heard of Angus Young using the 500T, he uses Alnico-magnet pickups.  The Angus bucker, which is Alnico, has around 13k resistance, it's hotter and might work.  It's similar to the Gibson 498 (which might also work).

Don't put a 250k pot on the neck, it will just make the P90 dull-sounding.  It will mostly cut the high end off, P90's generally use 500k pots.

I think you mean the 490T, there is no 390 that I know of from Gibson.

Al
The bottom of the pickup says;390T.I'm guessing because it's a burstbucker.Angus did use the 500T for a while,in an interview in Guitar one magazine he said.He uses his own model know,like you mentioned above.It's basically a 500T with some some of his own refinements to it.

[zombiwoof]

The P-90 sounds killer!I just got to find a bridge pickup that will balance out with that one.Maybe a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates?or,a Gibson 500T,like the one Angus Young uses in his SG's.

The Pearly Gates isn't much hotter than a standard Gibson humbucker, but the 500T is a hot ceramic pickup.  I've never heard of Angus Young using the 500T, he uses Alnico-magnet pickups.  The Angus bucker, which is Alnico, has around 13k resistance, it's hotter and might work.  It's similar to the Gibson 498 (which might also work).

Don't put a 250k pot on the neck, it will just make the P90 dull-sounding.  It will mostly cut the high end off, P90's generally use 500k pots.

I think you mean the 490T, there is no 390 that I know of from Gibson.

Al
The bottom of the pickup says;390T.I'm guessing because it's a burstbucker.Angus did use the 500T for a while,in an interview in Guitar one magazine he said.He uses his own model know,like you mentioned above.It's basically a 500T with some some of his own refinements to it.

The Angus model is not a version of the 500T, as I said that is a hot ceramic magnet humbucker, the Angus bucker is a hot Alnico magnet pickup.  Big difference, it is more like the 498T if you want to compare it to something.

I didn't know the Burstbuckers even had a number designation, but now I see what you're saying there.

The Burstbuckers are pretty good pickups, and I'm surprised you can't get it to balance with the P90 by raising/lowering the pickup and/or the pickup polepieces.  You said you screwed the P90 all the way down, did you also screw down the polepieces?.  Then, screw down the polepieces into the humbucker and raise it as far as possible?.  I don't know which Burstbucker that is, there are different ones with different winds, BB1, BB2, BB3, and the BB Pro, which is an Alnico 5 mag pickup.  So it's hard to know which other pickup to recommend.  You could try the 500T, if you like ceramic mag pickups (which I don't), but without knowing how much output that stock pickup has it's difficult.

Al

[soupbone]

I might go with a duncan custom,or maybe a dimarzio super distortion.You can't get much hotter than that!Haven't decided yet.

[soupbone]

Hey AL,The P-90 was all the way down to the body,and i had the burstbucker was almost touching the strings,and the P-90 still kicked it's butt!I'm begining to think something was wrong with that pickup.

[petemoore]

  There's proably a very small window of DC ohms in which every BB of that part# will read. Sometimes PU makers publish the ohms output even. Should be close to another of it's clones anyway [being a modern Gibson PU].
  If it sounds ''real weak'' it probably isn't working up to the intended design standard.
  Any pretty words associated with ad copy about what it's supposed to sound like ?

[Johan]

  There's proably a very small window of DC ohms in which every BB of that part# will read. Sometimes PU makers publish the ohms output even. Should be close to another of it's clones anyway [being a modern Gibson PU].
  If it sounds ''real weak'' it probably isn't working up to the intended design standard.
  Any pretty words associated with ad copy about what it's supposed to sound like ?

A Gibson Burstbucker 3 is about 8.6kOhm a BB2 ~8.2kOhm and a BB1 ~7.8kOhm...I say about, becouse my DMM isnt what it used to be and I dont trust it to be accurate in the decimals...a BB3 shouldnt have problems balancing against a P90...
..measure the resistance on the one you've got...it does happen that they fail, even if rare .
J

[WGTP]

According to DiMarzio's output spec.s, the P-90 actually has more than the PAF styles.  I think this set up is naturally going  to have more neck pickup volume.  Using 2 identical pickups will result in more neck volume because of the additional string movement.  Strum your guitar and look at it.  If just turning the neck down some doesn't work for you, you will need a stronger bridge pickup.  (all this assuming that your pickup is working normally)  At the Seymour Duncan forum http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=3 they have all kinds of answers for this stuff.  They have started switching magnets to "tweak" the tone in a particular guitar.  Alnico 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 are all being used.  The Custom Humbuckers respond particularly well to this and already come from SD with either a 2, 5 or Ceramic magnet in different models.

Changing the pots effects the dampening on the Q of the pickup.  A higher value pot isolates the pickup more from ground, dampens the Q less and produces more treble, I THINK.  500K is the standard value for humbuckers and P-90s.  250k for strats, teles, etc. 

[Johan]

.  500K is the standard value for humbuckers and P-90s.  250k for strats, teles, etc. 

Gibson changed to 300k linear, for volume on humbucker guitars in july 1973.  it's dokumented on their schematics
see the note  ...exeptions ofcourse being the "Historic" models, for..eh...historic reasons..
http://www.gibson.com/Files/schematics/lespaul2.gif

as long as were talking gibson pickups

J

[soupbone]

Wow!That's cool!!

[ayayay!]

Yeah, thanks for that WGTP.  Very helpful.  And I've also gone to using those 300k pots in my Les Pauls and Tele's.  Love 'em. 

[zombiwoof]

Yeah, thanks for that WGTP.  Very helpful.  And I've also gone to using those 300k pots in my Les Pauls and Tele's.  Love 'em. 

You like the linear taper volume pots?.  Many people don't like them, if they use distortion at all, because they don't do anything much between 10 down to around 2 on the pot, then they abruptly shut off the volume.  If you're talking about the 300k audio pots that are available, those are a bit better IMO.

Al

[Johan]

Yeah, thanks for that WGTP.  Very helpful.  And I've also gone to using those 300k pots in my Les Pauls and Tele's.  Love 'em. 

You like the linear taper volume pots?.  Many people don't like them, if they use distortion at all, because they don't do anything much between 10 down to around 2 on the pot, then they abruptly shut off the volume.  If you're talking about the 300k audio pots that are available, those are a bit better IMO.

Al

my experience is the opposite of yours, but I guess the amount and type of gain/distortion we're talking about would make a differance...?...with a regular LesPaul (with 300k linear, the way the come from gibson factory) and an unmoded marshall the transition is very smoth from clean to lightly overdriven to lead and everything in between.. with audio tapered pot's the guitar volume pot acts as distortion on/off between 9 and 10 and the rest is different volumes of clean...opinions vary, I guess..

j

[Derringer]

J

man ... I have one of those faded SG's with Iommi pickups in it and even though they have a ton of output ......  they sound soooooo good


sorry ... completely off topic