P90

[silvertonessuckbutigotone]

Hi there I was thinking about building a p90 or 2 for my upcoming les paul project. My question is, what makes them structurally different than other standard pickups, are they single coil or double coil? One of my sources says they are wound 10000 turns, why so much? How is there room for this much? Are there any diagrams of the insides of a p90?

[lovekraft]

P-90s are just big fat single coils - They're just wound wide and flat instead of tall and narrow. And for reference, a Fender Texas Special bridge pickup has almost 9500 turns on its skinny little bobbin, and 10,000 isn't that many more. To me, they sound about midway between a really bright Strat pickup and a vintage humbucker, kinda sparkly, but still nice and warm. HTH

Edited December 30, 2004 by lovekraft

[silvertonessuckbutigotone]

The only reason I thought 10000 was so many was because the reference page I was looking at (I dont remember the exact site, its in the "try to build pickups" thread and it was posted by litchfeild) had most other gibson pickups and mostl had 5,000ish. Another question, if its just a big fat single coil, does that mean the core would be a fatter rectangle than normal? Becasue if it was normal, I assume it would make more of an oval rather than the rectangle of a P90

[daniboy]

10000 coils is just a generalization. you can either overwind or underwind for higher and lower output respectively. also, there are other factors in the mix that affects the tone like gauge of wires used, wires insulation material and magnets. as lovekraft describe, its gibson's answer to fender's singlecoils and it has a raunchy, midrangey tone that falls between a singlecoil and humbucker.

structure-wise, the wires are coiled more like an oval around the bobbin and p90s uses 2 opposing bar magnets and adjustable screws as polepieces as opposed to magnetic polepieces of traditional singlecoils.

dani